The Wrestling Blog

The Russo Pill

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 14:30:00 +0000

The draw of WrestleMania III
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Hypothetical question, if you had a wrestling company on national television and worldwide pay-per-view, would you rather have a television segment draw two million viewers, which today would be a boffo number, or would you rather have your quarterly, or even monthly, paid event draw a quarter-million buys? The answer, to me at least, is quite clear. You want to cultivate a large, faithful audience that will spend more money on you than average, that will be loyal through the lean times, that will proselytize during the good ones. You want the hardcore fan's faith first and then use that base to then try to attract casual fans who might pop in sporadically and artificially inflate the ad rates you can demand on television. The answer is the high number of PPV buys.

This answer will not approach a consensus. A long time ago, over 20 years ago to be exact, pro wrestling was in a television ratings boom. Television was in a weird but unsustainable time, when cable was widespread enough that nearly everyone in the country had it, but not technologically advanced enough to have the wide breadth of programming choices available today. Right now, the sheer amount of content available for visual consumption is so mammoth that cable can't even contain it. Live television, of which cable was an evolution from the over-the-air networks, is kept afloat by sports, artistic competition shows, and the news. Anything where process or story trumps the result can now be viewed at a leisurely pace, whether by on-demand streaming or by digital recording for shows that still air traditionally. Wrestling, though in demand for live content aired 52 weeks a year, can easily be viewed post-first run, because the stories and the match quality and the funny moments are far more important to most viewers than raw wins and losses.

Therefore, the idea that you play to a television audience is antiquated. You get two million viewers for a segment, and you can flex, but real heads know you want to get as many of those viewers to drop money on live event tickets, merchandise, and pay-per-view events. It shouldn't come as a surprise, though, that people who cling to the idea that television ratings are king came up during this ratings boom era. Not all of them take it to the same extremes, but this argument that you need to court casual fans over those who want so bad to support your product that they will plan entire vacations around going to whatever metro area hosts WrestleMania or spending Labor Day weekend in Chicago for All Out stems from one, singular person who for some reason has people paying him money in 2021 to hear relevant wrestling opinions:

Vince Russo's contributions to the wrestling industry are still lauded enough to this day that he can make a living "analyzing" wrestling and supporting other writers through Patreon. I will not give him the courtesy of saying he makes a few good points, because any good point he makes comes entirely by accident and with no clear understanding of how professional wrestling works when it's at its healthiest. Jim Cornette, conversely, might deserve some credit for making a good point any once in awhile, but that goodwill fades like fog in the sunlight when he sics his online attack squad on anyone who likes something he finds personally repulsive. But this is not about ol' red face, it's about the BRO Man.

The consternation with Russo in 2021 is that his analysis often centers on the actual wrestling. He made it big in a time when televised wrestling was, by and large, a non-entity, and the creep of his ideas on what a wrestling match should be sometimes infected pay-per-view matches. It was heavy on the idea that people don't care about the actual matches, but on "moments," or being "entertained." It's easy to see how that brand of snake oil would have intoxicating effects on Vince McMahon, who doesn't like the term wrestling and sees himself and his product as "entertainment." However, when left to run a show without Russo's input, McMahon has always shown a respect to the actual process of a wrestling match, at least in letting it play out.

This sort of war exists on an axis where one extreme is "wrestling doesn't matter at all" and the other is "wrestling is the ONLY thing that matters." There are two facts that I believe are 100 percent true regarding this axis. The first is that Russo, thought probably not all the way on the extreme of "not at all," resides closer to that absolute than anyone who has ever worked in a successful wrestling company was to the OTHER absolute. The blatant disregard for the norms of pro wrestling was never clearer than when he took over creative duties for World Championship Wrestling and didn't have the stern voice in his ear telling him not to "go long with talking segments" like McMahon did regarding the famous "The Rock, This Is Your Life" one that drew one of the highest ratings ever₁. Russo is probably not the biggest reason why WCW went tits up, but his supposed remedies for their ratings dips behind WWE were ultimately more like palliative care putting it mildly.

The second truth is that the correct position on that axis is NOT in the middle, and I would venture to guess it's not close to the middle position that says "wrestling doesn't matter more or less than the other stuff." The dirty truth that so many people who are unwitting to the DNA of wrestling is that without the matches, you are left putting on an improv show or a scripted drama with writers who are nowhere near as cogent and witty as the ones already working on actual shows with actors who are nowhere near as competent as thespians as the ones already working in these shows or movies. Wrestling matches are the draw, even if people can hem and haw online as to what manner of wrestling match is the draw.

The fact of the matter is that no one kind of wrestling is a skeleton key. If it was, and the kind of stuff AEW that Russo derides as "ALL WORKRATE, BRO" has going on for it would not be drawing the same number of fans that it is. AEW has taken an audience, plied it, and grew it by executing on what that original fanbase wanted and then proselytized to others, be they lapsed fans or non-fans altogether looking for something cool to get into. They understand that everything that is done in any segment, any vignette, any promo, any backstage beatdown, any pre-produced puff piece, anything that isn't a wrestling match, and even some things that ARE wrestling matches have to lead to a wrestling match down the line, specifically, to a finish of one. There has to be stakes. There has to be consequences. Everything has to flow through the conduit of the fight simulacrum that wrestling produces as its main avenue of conflict and, more importantly, resolution.

Promos are great. Everyone remembers promos, and every wrestling promoter, from the most who tend most towards in-ring action to the ones that are more inclined towards not caring about it at all, knows this. However, the promo is not the steak. It is the sizzle. No matter how good the promo is, if it does not entice the person watching it to tune into the match, it is a failure. If soliloquys or dialogues were the draw, you wouldn't be watching wrestling for the reasons stated above. It doesn't matter if the match is something like Kazuchika Okada vs. Kenny Omega or Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant. The argument between those two kinds of matches among several thousands more different "types" is one you have after you realize that you're here to see a simulacrum of a real fight, done way more theatrically for entertainment value. And really, the argument over "what style is better" isn't so much that argument literally. Rather, it's "how well does the promoter understand their audience," and "what kind of wrestling has the biggest potential audience." The answer to the first question depends on the promoter, and the answer to the last varies with time and region and any number of other variables, including the answer to the first question. But I'm getting off track.

The point is that any time someone brings up the "This Is Your Life" segment as a rebuttal to people saying "wrestling matters," they have taken the Russo Pill. The Russo Pill is not a good thing to take. It has the detrimental side effects of your favorite narcotics with none of the fun highs you get from them. You'd be better off developing a mean case of pica and eating household items not meant for consumption than taking this. The Russo Pill causes a fundamental misunderstanding of wrestling. It claims the window-shopping portion of wrestling is better than the point of sale. For a business that is so married to capitalism like wrestling is, it's hilarious that such a backwards mentality can take such a hold in the business.

You can cite ad rates all you want, until you're blue in the face and gasping for air because you're forgetting to breathe between syllables. Ad rates are important, but prioritizing them as an "either/or" over building fans who will actually pay you directly for goods and services is so cognitively dissonant that one might think it was developed in a mental institution and not among the staff. Creating content that appeals to both the hardcore fans and the casual fans is not hard to do in theory. Finding something that will pop a viral audience, and let's face it, the casual fans in the '90s are equivalent to viral crowds now, is less a skill and more a crapshoot. The real viable companies, the ones throughout history, have always relied on getting people to stick around to see the payoffs.

That's why a quarter-million PPV buys is greater than two-million TV viewers. Those buys, which might represent more than one person per buy anyway, represent people who wanted to see the payoff. They're the fans you're going have coming back to you if you make them happy. Hell, judging by the return audience of WWE, you're going to get people coming back to you even if you piss them off. It's not either or, but it's plus. That's what happens when your view sees the whole picture. It's what happens when your view isn't clouded because you took the Russo Pill.

Poachers Delight, Case Number Four: Bron Breakker

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 17:50:00 +0000

Breakker, on the right here with Tommaso Ciampa, may find fulfillment in AEW
Photo Credit: WWE.com

All Elite Wrestling is here to stay. Whether you're a WWE partisan, a wrestling-promotion agnostic, or a lapsed fan leery that the surging Jacksonville-based promotion is for real, you have to take notice that even if WWE is still number one in all financial metrics, AEW is a threat to their hegemony. That's a good thing, unless you're Vince McMahon or one of his sycophants. A second wrestling company that provides the mainstream access to stardom AND competitive pay is everything that this business needs in America.

AEW's mere existence doesn't just mean there's more wrestling on the television. It means wrestlers now have a chance to jump from WWE to AEW. The vice-versa has a chance of happening, but outside of Brian Cage, what wrestler would want to make that move? And would anyone in AEW's viewership miss Cage? I think some might, but me, I could not care less if he showed up on Main Event or NXT 2.0 as Freask McBeask soon. The jumpers to AEW are what interest me, and not the obvious ones either. At this point, it's all but revealed that Windham Rotunda (Bray Wyatt) is going to be All Elite. Johnny Gargano might take the plunge too. Those aren't spicy names. You know what name would be spicy? One plucked from the aforementioned NXT 2.0, guys who don't fit a traditional AEW mold, and guys with little star power outside this little bubble. But there's one tantalizing name who could make the leap. His daddy, Robert Rechsteiner, named him Bronson. If you don't recognize his father's given name, maybe you know him as Rick Steiner. His son is now known as Bron Breakker.

The Case For: When you think of the Steiner Brothers, do you think of WWE? The fraternal tag team spent a few years there in the '90s, and Scott Steiner had an embarrassing post-World Championship Wrestling run there, but Vince McMahon's playground was not where most of their memories were created. The brothers were minted in the dying days of the territories. Rick found his greatest successes in the late days of the Carolinas and in Georgia and the early days of WCW, and Scott attained superstardom later on as Big Poppa Pump in WCW's Nitro era. To wit, neither Steiner is someone you'd associate with WWE or the WWF or the WWWF. In a day and age where WWE was the only real game in town, one might expect the son of the Dog-Faced Gremlin to settle for working there.

However, in a post-hegemony landscape, the fact that Rechsteiner chose to sign with WWE and not AEW feels like a misfit of legacy, and you can see it in the way he was branded right out of the gate. WWE has so far done nothing to make him a man of his own out of his father's and uncle's shadows. He wrestles like a Steiner, dresses like a Steiner, sounds like a Steiner, talks like a Steiner, looks like a Steiner, and has entrance music like a Steiner. His ring name, however, is Bron Breakker.

Bron Breakker.

BRON BREAKKER?!?!?

Yes, everyone knows Vince McMahon is so far up his own ass on recognizing wrestler legacies, partially in an attempt to control the IP he owns for his emplo... oh, I'm sorry, his "independent contractors," but mostly because he has a complex over being called "Junior" back in the days when he worked for the then-World Wide Wrestling Federation run by his father, Vincent J. McMahon. Some have speculated that he wasn't given his first reported name, the far-superior Rex Steiner, because neither Rick nor Scott had signed Legends deals. Who could blame them? Rick has a successful post-wrestling career in real estate and local politics. Scott still wrestles and has successfully operated his own Shoney's franchise for a time. If McMahon is going to be this petty over a prospect that even Fed-haters admit is can't miss, does he really deserve to have that blue-chipper in his grasps?

Furthermore, the reason why the Steiners got over so much originally was that they were able to wrestle in ways that were extensions of themselves. They didn't have to conform to McMahon's ideals until they were already established, and by then, they had leverage enough to do their thing in McMahon's sterile environment. The WWF in the early '90s was a far different beast than what it would become when WCW had ceased operations. Wrestlers had more leverage then. The idea of taking the son of Rick Steiner and training him almost from scratch at a WWE Performance Center whose hit rate of producing capable wrestlers is bleak compared to other schools is depressing. Why would I want to see an interpretation of Son of Steiner through the sanitized, boring lens of wrestling as desired by McMahon and Paul Levesque and Michael Hickenbottom and Matt Bloom and Kevin Dunn? It feels wrong.

A long time ago, Bryan Danielson signed with WWE to a developmental deal. I'm not talking the one that produced Daniel Bryan; this was in the early Aughts. Danielson went to William Regal and asked him what he could do to become the best wrestler possible. Regal told him, point blank as someone who was contracted to that company, to quit the company and wrestle all around the world. Danielson did just that and became the greatest of all-time, a wrestler so good that he was able to bend the WWE style to his desires rather than the other way around. Hopefully, Regal will be as candid as he was with the American Dragon with Bronson Rechsteiner. Remember, working for AEW doesn't mean you only work for AEW. AAA, New Japan, Impact, DDT, and the American indies would all be open for him. He could be a star in AEW and get seasoning that his father and uncle did in their careers. It would be a huge win for him if he jumped.

The Case Against: Some guys are just stars, ones that cannot be held down. You could give Bronson Rechsteiner a clown gimmick and a name even more absurd than Bron Breakker, and he would nail it. Could you blame him if he wanted to nail it in a company that has record-breaking profits and decades of historical inertia that allow it to pay huge potential salaries to guys like him? He's a physical specimen who can project the kind of character that gives McMahon priapisms. The old NXT is dead and nearly buried. When Tommaso Ciampa and Io Shirai and Johnny Gargano all either go to the main roster or leave the company, NXT 2.0 will become what McMahon wanted it to be, not a boutique alternative brand within the company, but a place where his precious body guys could get screen time before they made the jump.

To wit, Bron Breakker will be a player on the main roster. I don't even think I need to qualify it as a maybe. As long as he doesn't get hurt or bored with wrestling, he will enter the main roster. McMahon will push him. He will probably get to beat Roman Reigns at some point in his early career. Yeah, you can make money in AEW, but the draw of being the top guy in WWE is a siren call. Unless the company deteriorates to the point where the brand name becomes worthless, being The Guy in WWE means doors are open for you. I think there will come a day when WWE withers and dies. I'm not sure that day is today.

So, Breakker will at the bare minimum will have "highest paid WWE wrestler" at his disposal. He might get roles in movies. He might sell a bunch of merchandise. Having him leave WWE to go to AEW and season himself as a wrestler feels more like a fan-driven desire than one that would cause a spark to go off in his brain for his own betterment. I fully believe AEW is overall better for wrestlers than WWE, but for as much as AEW is improving material conditions, they are nowhere closer to paying wrestlers what they're worth than WWE is, and in WWE, top guys get better material conditions just on the basis of being top guys. It's not fair or right, but when you're Breakker, it's something that is in your mind, and not near the back either. Point being, he has McMahon by the metaphorical balls even now, and he might be insane to give that leverage up.

The Final Word: The world is Bronson Rechsteiner's oyster. He has a clear path to being The Guy in WWE, but for as sure a thing as that is right now, how much longer will it last? Jumping to AEW is a far better proposition now than going to TNA or testing the waters in Japan or Mexico has ever been, and if any one wrestler can reach levels in that company that would be comparable to what he will more than likely get in WWE, it's the man who should be known as Rex Steiner.

Poacher's Delight, Case Number Three: Big E

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 14:30:00 +0000

Big sweaty men slappin' meat in AEW? Maybe...
Photo Credit: WWE.com

All Elite Wrestling has done what WWE has conditioned people to think could never be done. They got Tony Schiavone and CM Punk to return to wrestling and overcome the malaise they developed for that business in their prior stints. They made a deal to honor Owen Hart with Hart's widow and family when WWE CONVINCED everyone that Martha's problem was with wrestling and not with the negligent and callous company that killed her husband. And they've overrun New York City, WWE's home base for DECADES, setting attendance records and exciting the city with wrestling at levels not seen since at least Rock vs. John Cena, once in a lifetime part two. All signs point to them not just being a fringe alternative to WWE in the North American wrestling market, but as legit competition and a future potential market leader.

This means that people will jump from WWE to AEW. There are targeted names that seem like foregone conclusions to head over once their contracts are up. Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn are two. There may be others, like Kyle O'Reilly or Ricochet, but the likely names, to me, are boring. I want the spicy names. Baron Corbin, All Elite Wrestler, is spicy. Charlotte Flair on the infographic posted by Tony Khan signifying that she's All Elite, is spicy. And the man who won his first WWE Championship a little under two weeks ago on Monday Night Raw, Ettore Ewen, better known as Big E, is spicy as hell. Let's examine his case, shall we?

The Case For: WWE just put their co-top championship on Big E. He should have little reason to want to jump to AEW, right? Point blank, titles really should not be the driving factor in whether someone sees themselves as a main event player. WWE has often used the Money in the Bank briefcase as a vehicle to test drive someone in the main event without ever putting faith into them as wrestlers. Whether Big E's first title reign is more of a Miz one than a John Cena one remains to be seen. Titles aren't the be-all, end-all of whether a wrestler is a main event player, but one can only look at how title reigns can correlate to importance in that or any company.

Big E won his first World Title at age 35. He made his debut on the main roster at age 26, coming with a NXT Championship to his name, from a time when winning the NXT Championship portended success at the next level. He has all the tools that Vince McMahon wants except skin pigment, and no matter how much representation Black wrestlers have in WWE right now, it's important to look at the context. Bobby Lashley debuted on the main roster at age 29. He got to the main event at age 44, after leaving the company. Kofi Kingston got to the main roster at 27. After a main event tease shortly after his debut that ultimately went nowhere, he had to wait another decade to get to main event level, age 37. Mark Henry debuted at age 25, underwent humiliating angles on-screen and weight shaming offscreen. His Hall of Pain run, his one title run, happened at age 40. Booker T was WCW World Champion when that company closed. He lost the title at SummerSlam 2001, scuttled around the midcard mostly, and won his only WWE World Title five years later. The hallmark of all these sniffs in the main event is that they were ultimately temporary. Henry had one other main event program against John Cena a few years later, but these wrestlers, with the exception of Lashley, whose loss of his title was recent enough that he hasn't had the chance to be demoted yet, all were mostly pushed back down the card after their lone title run. Booker T might be the exception, but it's telling he had to jump to TNA to get back to the top of a company. WWE will say they treated Book like royalty, but other than his Kingly run, he was a supporting player.

Is there a sea change in WWE happening? You can maybe squint and think that the leopard is changing his spots, but Big E most definitely should have been pushed to the upper stratospheres of WWE's card structure at least five years before now. Whether or not a title would come with that is one thing, but the one thing WWE loves to do is pepper their top guys with top title reigns. Roman Reigns, John Cena, CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Alberto del Rio, Randy Orton, Edge, even SHEAMUS all are multiple time champs across the spectrum: WWE, World Heavyweight (Big Gold), or Universal. The one Black wrestler in that group is The Rock. Basically, if you're a Black wrestler, you have to be a preternaturally gifted speaker from two different wrestling families with Hollywood crossover potential to be a main event mainstay.

AEW does have their own deficiencies regarding Black wrestlers so far, yes. They clearly could and should have pushed Scorpio Sky to a main event level by now. But AEW also has only been in business for two years. They have shown that they value Black talent given how many wrestlers they've signed and their continued support of both Nyla Rose and Jade Cargill. One could argue that most of their main event level talent had gotten over in arenas other than AEW. Their two biggest success stories are Hangman Page and Britt Baker. Everyone else, whether Jon Moxley or Kenny Omega or even Orange Cassidy, got over first somewhere else. I would look at Big E as a guy who got over in WWE more than I would look at him as someone who'd be a victim of "All Elite White People," which I feel is a bad faith smear by people trying to paint WWE as a virtuous paradise for Wrestlers of Color despite the fact that their trail of grievances towards Black wrestlers is STILL being left behind. Just look at Bianca Belair's recent history.

If he were to jump, Big E could immediately be AEW's first Black wrestling megastar, and there's another massive piece of evidence that should they offer him a contract when his WWE tenure is up, he might jump. Brodie Lee and Big E were very good friends, to the point where nearly everyone congratulating Big E for his title win brought up how proud Lee would've been. The way AEW handled the end of Lee's life, the privacy given and all the tributes laid at his feet after he passed, has been a point of pride for the company. Punk, Bryan Danielson, and the Owen Hart Foundation all pointed to the way they handed that situation as reasons why they were amenable to going there. Why wouldn't it be a selling point for all his friends, especially one who was as close to him as Big E?

The Case Against: Do you believe everything you read on the dirtsheets? You shouldn't, but the hit rate on truth vs. fiction is a lot better than some of the most ardent skeptics would have you believe. One chestnut from reports about five or so years ago said that there was a decision internally to be made about who might succeed John Cena as WWE's arch-draw, their ace so to speak. Reigns was surprisingly not McMahon's choice, but he was Paul Levesque's guy. McMahon wanted to put Big E in that spot. For whatever reason, Levesque persuaded McMahon to go with the Anoa'i kid. The point is, if you believe those reports, McMahon loves Big E. It may have taken that infatuation to materialize in a main event push, but it's not like the signs weren't there.

For example, what stables in WWE are allowed to stay together as long as the New Day has? The stable has been protected at levels that McMahon hasn't even afforded Reigns at times. Yeah, Reigns rarely ever loses and has always been in high-profile stories, but at times, his push has felt forced, artificial. New Day has existed in a plane below the main event, but one that gets marquee things thrown at them constantly. They hosted a WrestleMania, which meant they were on screen with regularity on the biggest show of the year. Their feud with the Usos allowed them to get a Hell in a Cell match, which usually was only reserved for the big singles titles or John Cena-level blood feuds.

There's also the fact that WWE has consistently skewed older on pushing wrestlers in main event slots. It feels like even as far back as 2004, when they were obsessed with pushing the youth, they started feeling buyers' remorse when Brock Lesnar left the company to pursue other avenues and Orton didn't get as nuclear over as they hoped he would when he eclipsed Lesnar's mantel as youngest Champion ever. That progression on age has developed over the years to now, where the "new" main event guys are a 45-year-old Lashley and 36-year-old Drew McIntyre. At age 35, Big E is ripe to develop into a workhorse at the top of the card in WWE. If McMahon is going to break his mold and have a Black wrestler who isn't descended from a Hall of Fame father and a literal wrestling dynasty on his mother's side stay in the main event, it's going to be now with Ettore Ewen.

The Final Word: Big E in AEW is one of those jumps that might seem logical in the mind of a low-information partisan smark, but the dynamics in play make it feel far more unlikely than if, say, Roderick Strong was All Elite when his contract is up. That being said, there are plenty of reasons why a Big E jump down to Jacksonville would make a ton of sense. Again, these are exciting times, unprecedented in the last 20 years. The idea that anyone could go from RAW to another show or vice versa is something that made the late '90s so unpredictable in the best ways. Any name with little exception is on the table.

Instant Feedback: He Has 'Til Five, Ref

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 02:00:00 +0000

He's back

I didn't know what to expect from Bryan Danielson's return to a ring outside of WWE's purview. Honestly, I should have gone with my gut. He is, after all, the greatest wrestler in the history of the sport, the art, the whatever the fuck this thing everyone reading this rag loves. You don't lose the ability to have a great wrestling match, especially against Kenny Omega, who takes his craft more seriously than anyone ever has at least since Randy Savage was still alive and active. The means by which you have a great match may change. Genichiro Tenryu did not have the same incredible bouts in 2005 that he did in 1985 after all. Yeah, Danielson didn't have the same exact excellent match in 2021 that he had in 2006, but how close a simulacrum it was to what his wars with folks like Takeshi Morishima or Low Ki or Nigel McGuinness was now, post-medical retirement, post-years of being in a WWE environment not known for stimulation was, in a word, incredible.

Old school Danielson matches, hell even new school Omega matches, have this reputation of having moves crammed together, and I think that's just Vince McMahon propaganda taking hold. He's had too much influence over the wrestling discourse, and I think it's time to stop. Anyone who watched this match knows what a "good" indie-style match is, and you could count the number of "moves" that happened on one hand for the first third of it or so. It was a study in how the mash left out to ferment for decades across continents developed its spice, its flavor.

The beginning was based around them feeling each other out, but new-school wrestlers don't do that through the collar-and-elbow and standing switches and arm drags. You get the lay of the land by throwing out little stingers, probing arrows. You land a few and give each other a warning of what's to come. For Danielson, predictably, it was the short kick, or the "mid kick" as Rocky Romero calls them on New Japan commentary. For Omega, it was the knife-edge chop, eliciting crowd noises of a wrestler recently in hot water for how lewd and reprehensible his behavior was in the past. That being said, the "Woo" doesn't belong to Ric Flair anymore. It belongs to the chop, a life of its own. Wrestling is littered with the bodies of brigands and racists, abusers and rapists. Unfortunately, those foul people gave wrestling a lot of its color over the last century. The best our favorites can do is reclaim those pieces and hopefully not have souls as black as those they take from. But I digress.

The second act was almost a paradox, given that the man with visible battle damage was the aggressor. Omega left Danielson with a chest redder than the faces of AEW's biggest critics when the company sets ratings records and sells out tennis stadia in the biggest metropolitan area on the continent north of the Rio Grande. Yet with all his scars, Danielson showed he was one step ahead of the AEW Champion. He promised that what he brought to the table was greater than anything Omega had faced, and the American Dragon is not a liar, no. But for as much as his offense was familiar to the millions who fell in love with him as Daniel Bryan, he sent a message to the thousands who saw him on grainy DVDs or live in rec centers.

"I HAVE UNTIL FIVE."

Cattle Mutilation.

These were the hallmarks of the American Dragon. He sent the message that he was back, much like John Wick in the first movie. But every great hero needs some bit of hubris. Danielson went outside and took too much time. Omega was able to wile his way into a dragon suplex on the ramp and then a V-trigger in the ropes with an entire-ass head start from the top of the ramp. The violent monster, murder in his eyes and vulgarity at his throat, had been laid in involuntary repose. Omega's turn to lay into the Dragon was nigh. And that's when the bombs started dropping.

What people think of as indie wrestling usually is snapshotted from these insane end flurries, where each wrestler dips into their bags of tricks and tries to put each other down. Without the context, it might seem meaningless, but those who fear change will ignore context and call things that can exist on their own as existential threats to their wholesome and traditional way of life. The only thing is, WWE cannot exist without encroaching on territory, but their own hubris will cause their downfall. The style that their most annoying surrogates and the staunchest company men (and women) have defended with bluster, one that has borrowed from everywhere they could without giving credit, is not what is the draw anymore.

The tide has changed, to be honest. The style, born in women's offshoots of major Japanese companies in the '80s, cultivated in those same jars in the '90s, spilling over into the men's promotions, borrowed by American companies founded and staffed by tape traders, and flavored by trips into Mexico, one that probably can't even be distilled into one singular style if I'm being intellectually honest, is the prime one now. The paradigm has shifted, and it probably shifted long before AEW fired shots across the bow of Titan Towers from a tennis stadium in Flushing Meadows. But Dynamite: Grand Slam was when it became undeniable.

The 90 minutes that followed were as easy a watch as that opening contest, outside of a few excess minutes in the MJF/Brian Pillman, Jr. match and the seemingly superfluous Arn Anderson apron bump in the Cody Rhodes/Malakai Black match. AEW has this nagging little habit of hyping up shows and delivering. Again, changing the paradigm, not only delivering on one out of every ten shows. They're smashing expectations. I think that's the most important thing to take on an analytic level.

But on an artistic level? On a visceral level? Daniel Bryan never died, no. But he was subsumed into the American Dragon. He's back, and professional wrestling is better for it. The best wrestler in history is now a part of the best wrestling promotion going right now, at least in America. That's important. That's satisfying. That makes me happy.

The TWB Draft: Judgment Day, Part One

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 18:20:00 +0000

The winning roster had these two guys on it

Roster construction is the first phase of creating a wrestling promotion. For this exercise, a hypothetical scenario was created where the WWE was dismantled and the McMahon family was jailed for their crimes. In the ashes, six promotions in six different distinct North American territories sprang up, and the talent in this country was allocated via draft and a post-draft free agency period. Everyone's rosters are complete, and before the second part of this exercise, the booking of the first pay-per-view cycle, is begun, judgment must come for the roster construction.

I assembled a team of three judges to help me critique the construction of each of the rosters. They are:

Corey E. (@Corey5771 on Twitter)
Anthony T. (@edgewalker81 on Twitter)
Ryan O. (@BudapestMission on Twitter)

They, along with my own judgment, comprise the panel who would decide who wins the first stage of this project. Without further ado, allow me to get into the rankings and the reasoning behind the people's decisions, starting with Corey E.

I came up with a subjective methodology that would factor in roster diversity, pick value, and strength of roster, while objectively picking what feds cater to what I personally would want to watch.

To start, I broke each of the six rosters into six parts:

Main Eventers- The four highest-drafted men not in a Tag Team
Women’s Division- “Who run the world?” and such. I put the most weight into women drafted. A strong Women’s Division, that gets more than one segment per two hours, is gonna shift a show higher-up in my DVR priority/more likely to watch live.
Tag Teams- I took every wrester who is part of an established tag team, or have a close association. I might have left some unaccounted for, but I did do some research, to see what non WWE/AEW guys are in one.
Men’s Upper-Midcard- The eight highest men drafted after the four main-eventers and not grouped in a Tag division.
Men’s Depth- All men picked not in any group above
NPCs- Carried the least weight as I liked everyone’s picks. If I selected one pick from each fed {Ex: Mauro/Excalibur/Pat Mac commentary team, Renee doing interviews, A.J. Lee as General Manager, and Michael Buffer as ring announcer} I’d have a great core of non-wrestlers.

I had each of the six categories carry weight that total a sum of 100 points, where first place was 6/21 of those points, second place was 5/21, etc. Here’s how it played out:

While this was a fair way to measure strength and diversity of a roster, I didn’t want my official ballot to be completely in lockstep with the math, so I considered roster cohesion objectively to see if I wanted to switch any feds in my final rankings.

WACW could have six of the eight biggest stars, AND wound up with the deepest women’s division on top of that, however they could have a “too many stars” problem, whereas RMW and PCW have the AEW-counter programming feel to them. As a Sami Zayn homer, I had to move LSW up from last place, plus they had a really diverse mix. I dropped MFW down because their main event scene features too many guys halfway out the door to retired, or shouldn’t be main event-ing. No Women’s division is a big knock on IWF, but having the deepest tag division helps “cohesion” on a surface level.

FINAL BALLOT!: (Holy shit I wrote way too much, and spent way too much time on this):

World Ass Championship Wrestling
Rocky Mountain Wrestling
Pacific Coast Wrestling
Lone Star Wrestling
International Wrestling Federation
Midwest Federation of Wrestling

Next up, Anthony T!

1. WACW - The quality of this roster is hard to beat and getting Omega at their 21st pick is an insane value. These styles mesh really well with enough diversity that it's not going to be the same style for everyone. The up and comers are very impressive as well.

2. RMW - In terms of sheer talent, second only to WACW. The women's division is especially strong here. MJF coming in at 15 for them is a steal.

3. IWF - Probably the best mix of styles. Brock vs Pentagon vs Malakai Black is a 3 way from heaven. The highs are insanely high here, but it tapers off in the middle and on the low end.

4. PCW - Strong workers, great promos in Eddie Kingston and the clutch pick up of Hayter really sell me on this one.

5. MFW - I don't love the Bray pick at number one or the Goldberg pick anywhere, but there's some strength here and diversity with Nick Gage. Lots of potential, but not many dream matches I see.

6. LSW - I struggled with this because while I recognize the talent, I am just so done with WWE and this roster is heavy with WWE talent. Some great wrestlers here, but little diversity in the big names and it mostly feels like an episode of Smackdown.

Next up, another judge who had some numbers in play, Ryan O.!

IWF - This beef heavy roster has a lot going for it, but also a lot going against as it features absolutely zero female talent. Lesnar will be able to live out his dream of crushing through anyone in the roster who would dare make fun of his man bun, but there is enough talent to form a proper stable to offer some serious competition to the big man. And there is a whole lot of Lucha all star wrestling available with the Lucha Bros, who can expand upon Vince’s fever dream of Mexico attacking Ireland when they take on Sheamus in a handicap match.

LSW - This fed knows how to party to the point that my major concern is the wellness of the talent. Those concerns aside, this is a well-balanced Fed between current independent and established talent, with enough big WWE names to give the indie folks, even Suge D, a chance to establish themselves. With Danhausen in the mix (love that Danhausen), there is enough opportunity for fun weirdness and extreme competition to make this a really balanced mix that should deliver some top-tier matches.

MFW - Ruby Soho AND Serena Deeb!? Be still my heart. This Fed also features a great mixture of talent between established and indie Feds, but goes a step further and actually recruits some top-tier black wrestling talent as well. It has to be said, even though it should not have to be, that featuring black talent is a major concern in all of wrestling, so having Sasha, Lashley, Omos, Fred Yehi, and then Arez, Tay Conti, and Suzuki really demonstrates that wrestling is for everybody and every body.

PCW - You have selected Eddie Kingston and will forever be welcomed in the halls of Valhalla. Seriously, I was at All Out and it really, *really* felt like the crowd was actually going to get Kingston the victory over Miro. Just incredible. PCW also boasts some of the most stacked female talent of the draft, with Satomura and Asuka able to rekindle their amazing rivalry in Japan, and with Jordynne Grace and Kamille there to show that women are big beefy badasses too. There is a great mix of talent here that will allow for the younger workers to get some GREAT experience and help in development while giving us the matches that we really want…AJ Styles vs Eddie Kington.

RMW - As an established AEW mark, RMW has a whole lot going for it. Some of the best female talent on the planet is present here with Thunder Rosa, Charlotte, Statlander…and Rousey for some reason. But beyond that, you have some GREAT hard hitting beefy boys here with Walter, FTR, Andrade, Jeff Cobb, OTIS, Powerhouse Hobbs, Calvin Tankman, and one of my favorites in Filthy Tom. Hell, the Briscoe brothers are still not done either. This is a fantastic selection.

WACW - I am on the negative side for choosing THE ROCK, who might be the only MEGA draw that harkens back to the halcyon days of the 90s, but aside from that…this is a great mixture. Taking Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus without dear, sweet Marko Stunt seems almost unfair, but man is there a lot of talent here. CM Punk, Hangman and Moxley are guys who I could watch for days on or off the mic, the Bucks for all their shortcomings just had one of the all-time greatest tag team matches, and then you have a good mixture of female talent that can definitely put some great matches together.

Each fed was ranked in four categories and given a score, with six points given to the best promotion in that category:

IWF

Strength of Roster 1

Roster Diversity 2

Pick Value 5

Cohesion 5

LSW

Strength of Roster 3

Roster Diversity 1

Pick Value 2

Cohesion 1

MFW

Strength of Roster 2

Roster Diversity 6

Pick Value 4

Cohesion 2

PCW

Strength of Roster 6

Roster Diversity 5

Pick Value 6

Cohesion 5

RMW

Strength of Roster 4

Roster Diversity 4

Pick Value 1

Cohesion 3

WACW

Strength of Roster 5

Roster Diversity 3

Pick Value 3

Cohesion 4

My Ranking

PCW
WACW
MFW
IWF
RMW
LSW

Finally, it's time for Dear Leader's ballot.... good ol' TH

As a foreward to this judgment, I would like to say that I would prefer watching the sixth best out of six promotions on here over most of what’s on television right now, especially WWE if we’re judging on rosters only. Each one of the rosters found an identity and hammered home on it. It was the small differences that had my rankings shake out the way they did, and none of the teams/single drafters need to feel any shame in how they constructed their rosters.

First Place - Midwest Federation of Wrestling

The Midwestern Territory understood the assignment more than everyone else in my view. They built a promotion I want to watch with a roster that is chock full of big personalities and smart workers. It has a distinct Mid-South/ECW vibe in that it has a grimy, knockdown, drag-out aesthetic but also contains potential several matches that could end up on my Match of the Year ballot.

Second Place - Lone Star Wrestling

Aesthetically a 180 from my first place vote but still having a complete and diverse roster, the World Class Territory promises to provide the askew view on pro wrestling that Chikara gave, only without the skinflint abuse neglector in charge. The potential top matches will help draw eyes and PPV buys, but it’s the robust and eclectic undercard that has me the most excited.

Third Place - Rocky Mountain Wrestling

The rugged Big Sky Territory attached their cart to the greatest wrestler ever, and built a super indie worthy of prime time television. While I have questions of whether Bryan Danielson can be a full-time guy for them, it’s hard to pass the human skeleton key up. They also built value in the women’s division late, and they might have the best roster suited for a Bloodsport/grapplefuck division.

Fourth Place - Pacific Coast Wrestling

Going Claudio Castagnoli/Eddie Kingston with the first two picks was an odd gambit given the names still on the board, but it’s a solid feud that can carry the promotion. The rest of the roster fill-out gives me the good feeling that prime NXT used to give me, and given the menace Paul Levesque is in jail, one can feel good that this NXT-simulacrum may not give into the same excesses the one WWE just shuttered did.

Fifth Place - International Wrestling Federation

The decision not to go with any women here was curious indeed given how strong female wrestlers are in the country right now. Additionally, Brock Lesnar as a top pick was a bit odd given his lax schedule. That being said, the roster fill out contains many of my own personal favorites, especially near the top.

Sixth Place - World Ass Championship Wrestling

Again, I stress all six of these rosters are draws to me. Additionally, being able to pick up names like the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega late, though understandable to me given the atmosphere of this particular Twitter bubble, has to be considered a coup. That being said, I feel like the most puzzling pick was using a draft pick on The Rock given the draft should’ve been used to obtain the best wrestlers total. That all being said, this was a strong draft that happened to have the misfortune of being stacked up against five other strong drafts.

With all that in place, I tabulated scores simply by the ranking given by each judge. The lowest score won. Here's how that all shook out:

So going into the booking phase, World Ass Championship Wrestling is on top of the world. It's almost like the 1980s all over again, with wrestling critically cycling through the Southeast portion of the country. Keep your eyes on this space for the next phase... fantasy booking!

Poacher's Delight, Case Number Two: Charlotte Flair

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 14:30:00 +0000

Would Flair be too big to succeed in AEW?
Photo Credit: WWE.com

With Bryan Danielson, Ruby Soho, and Adam Cole debuting at All Out and more names rumored to be on the way, AEW is well on its way to becoming a legitimate contender to WWE's wrestling hegemony. If you read into the ratings numbers and think Dynamite's larger draw of the much-desired 18-49 male demographic is not an aberration and a sign of a trend to come, then they already are a competitor. Folks who were not around when World Championship Wrestling was in business don't know the excitement of wrestlers who were on one program one week showing up on the other team's programming the next. All in all, that was half the mystique of watching each Monday night between the years of 1996 and 2000.

Again, Kevin Steen and Remi Sebei (Sami Zayn) feel like they're layups to defect from Titan Sports to join their buddies in what basically amounts to MEGA PRO WRESTLING GUERRILLA. I don't want the layups. I want the spicy options. This week's case study might not seem so spicy given that her beau is already there and her daddy might just end up joining him before the month is out. Still, when one thinks about WWE royalty, it's hard not to put her name at the top of the list. She's called The Queen, for crying out loud.

This week, I examine the case of Charlotte Flair.

The Case For: Flair's support structure in WWE has not, nor has it ever been, her Four Horsewoman compatriots. In fact, one might suggest the only real bond among that group exists between Mercedes Varnado and Pamela Martinez, aka Sasha Banks and Bayley. Still, Flair has always felt othered from the group, alienated, put on a pedestal. Flair was always the most protected one after the call-up to main, even after Becky Lynch attained supernova status. When you're lonely at the top, you find comfort in other places than your competition, no matter how much of a sorority your locker room tends to be.

In WWE, Flair had her father, Ric, and a man she started dating after he signed with the company from CMLL, Andrade Cien Almas, later just Andrade. They were always with her, and Flair even started to advocate for her boyfriend when creative foolishly had "nothing for him." How you can have nothing for a guy who oozes charm and can wrestle a broomstick to the tune of at least three Dave Meltzer snowflakes is beyond me, but WWE Creative has wasted more can't-miss wrestlers before Andrade got there, and they'll continue to waste them as long as Vince McMahon or his scions are there with any input.

One might think that Flair, even with the backing of the office behind her, might want to go where the people who listen to her and with whom she has the most rapport also work. It's facile to suggest the only reason Flair would jump to AEW is that her man and her dad are there, but sometimes, you still do want familiarity. Still, it wouldn't be the only reason. For the longest time, WWE was the only big world a woman could conquer in a wrestling ring. That's not true anymore. AEW is now a place with a young, hungry roster in search of a final boss with stature and name recognition beyond what anyone else there has, even Britt Baker. What's more impressive anyway? Having a senile old man say "YEAH, YOU CAN WIN A BELT AS MANY TIMES AS YOUR OLD MAN, FUCK YOU," or going into new territory and proving that you're the woman? Her dad did that for as many times as there were satellite territories in the National Wrestling Alliance. There may only be one other place to prove oneself now, but it's a hell of an opportunity if it comes up.

The Case Against: "Don't shit where you eat." I'm not entirely sure where the etymology of that local idiom was founded, but it basically means "keep your home and work lives separate." Just because Andrade is there and her father is almost guaranteed to show up there doesn't necessarily mean Flair is a gimme, nor should she. There's something to be said about being able to come home from work and talk about your day with someone who isn't in the same workspace.

Besides, why would you want to go to a place where you would be the biggest deal when you're already the biggest deal where you are? It's not like there'd be challenges there for her to conquer. The biggest hurdle she'd have to climb is not having the crowd turn on her because "CHARLOTTE WINZ LOL" is such an overarching meme that you couldn't at all blame Tony Khan for implementing it upon her arrival. If you think the women's division is in a precarious position now, imagine when Flair gets there and her gravity demands wins over Baker, Jade Cargill, Hikaru Shida, Ruby Soho, Kris Statlander, EVERYONE. None of the male signings in AEW so far have had that gravity around them. They didn't sign John Cena or poach Randy Orton. The dynamics are different here, especially given how in-the-beginning-stages the AEW women's division is still in. It's why Soho, a transcendent talent who got over on her own after getting fired by WWE, fit in. She was a star, but one of a similar magnitude now as the ones AEW has. She could also go in the ring.

And therein lies the rub. Would Flair want to go to a company where her workrate would be microanalyzed? Face it; WWE and AEW are different animals when it comes to in-ring ability. No more was this accentuated than when WWE gave up the ghost on Paul Levesque's pipe dream of having his own PWG and retrofitted NXT back to being purely developmental. WWE main has taken some of the most self-indulgent tendencies of indie wrestling of the last two decades to place as tropes on main event-level matches, but you're not seeing workrate bomb-fests even when you get guys who have been in that scene like Kevin Owens. Flair is a WWE main event-hardened wrestler. She never worked SHIMMER, has never been to Japan, and only has lucha experience from whatever her boyfriend has taught her, if anything. Yes, to distill AEW to "workrate" is disingenuous, but there's also a certain expectation of how a match should go in that purview. I'm not sure Flair can hack it, nor would it be offensive if she didn't want to.

The Final Word: Charlotte Flair in AEW is the ultimate wild card. There are myriad reasons why she would work there and just as many why she would be better off staying with WWE. It's almost like she would have to make the jump just to prove hypotheses empirically, but would it be worth it for AEW? Taking on any of the Horsewomen, even Banks or Bayley (no matter how much I think either would fit there), would be a shock even greater than Jon Moxley showing up at the first Double or Nothing or Chris Jericho announcing his signing at the press conference. Would AEW handle it well? I don't know if you can find out without finding out, to be honest.

On Representation in Modern Booking

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 15:30:00 +0000

Sky has been a missed opportunity for AEW so far

Brian Cage is not happy in All Elite Wrestling. He hasn't said anything, but his wife, former Lucha Underground ring announcer Melissa Santos, has been vocal on social media about how he's been "misused." As an interested observer, I was baffled by the notion that Cage, who has been a fixture on AEW television since his debut at the Double or Nothing 2020 Casino Battle Royale, was misused. He has been in a feud with Sting and Darby Allin, including a payoff in a memorable cinematic match where Sting wrestled for the first time since his infamous Seth Rollins match in WWE years ago. He got to have a mini title program with Jon Moxley when he was Champion. He was the centerpiece of the Team Taz story, both as a member at first and now as the babyface fighting them. What else more could you want than having all that exposure in a hot company where fans react to everything (except for.... you).

Then I saw what the complaints entailed. Santos let everyone know that her husband is misused because he's not wrecking everyone like Brock Lesnar does in WWE. She wants him to have a title belt and win all the time, which, to me, represents a short-sighted vision of what wrestling should be. Especially in a company where title belts are in shorter supply than in the other, bloated American company, currency can't be measured in what combination of leather and metal you wear around your waist or throw over your shoulder. I can't hate on a worker vocally demanding a better lot than what they have in a company owned by a billionaire. I can, however, note that a vocal Trump-supporting guy who pals around with noted scumbags like Drake Wuertz and Joey Ryan using his wife to demand he never loses in a company where him with a Lesnar push would be incredibly not entertaining in the least is probably not anything anyone should pay more than a token note to.

Cage and Santos view wrestling through the lens of the mark. Perceptive wrestlers know being seen and being presented as someone formidable, whether you win or lose, is the play. The imperceptive ones only see wins as currency, and title belts are the things that measure your worth, not just in kayfabe, but in real life. Still, a lot of people use title belts as a measuring stick in real life, because it's a lot easier to go to Wikipedia and tabulate Championship reigns than it is to have a stopwatch and clock how much time someone gets and then qualitatively measure that time against an arbitrary standard. That's why the debate on minority representation in wrestling almost always boils down to "how many titles have Black wrestlers won?"

AEW shouldn't take fire from Cage's camp on how they've booked him, but the fire should come from them pushing someone like Cage, who by all metrics hasn't connected with the crowd in ways that even his Team Taz cohorts like Ricky Starks or Powerhose Hobbs have, instead of going with literally anyone else whom crowds have latched onto. The main critique of AEW has been that the company has not made a good faith effort to push Black wrestlers, but people go to the well of "uhhh TITLE BELTS?" far too quickly to make it. Twenty wrestlers have held titles in AEW if you don't include the FTW Championship, a vanity title used for storyline purposes only. Two of them, Scorpio Sky and Nyla Rose, have been Black so far, a rate of ten percent in history. You can't really tell anything from that number because it's not contextual. It's a raw statistic that probably lines up historically with WWE or World Championship Wrestling. But it's meaningless.

As much as it's harder to do, as are most exercises performed in the abstract, one has to look at the perception to figure out what AEW's relationship with Black wrestlers is. I'm not talking about POC wrestlers, because you can make a case that they've treated Mexican and Japanese/Asian wrestlers with respect unprecedented in the 21st Century (and not seen since World Championship Wrestling was open). Black wrestling fans don't feel represented by seeing Hikaru Shida as Women's Champion or Minoru Suzuki treated as a conquering marauder. I can't speak for how they feel, but judging by what I've seen Black folks say on social media, it should probably start with pushing wrestlers in that demographic even more.

A cursory examination would show that AEW's track record in this department is lacking. The Black wrestler they've pushed the hardest, Sky, is an interesting case, because he was at times primed to be a breakout singles star. He was pushed as the star portion of SCU when they won the Tag Team Champions, but as their reign lost momentum, it felt like the company's desire to push him diminished. They lost the titles to Kenny Omega and Hangman Page, and Sky fell back into Dark territory. The second push he appeared to receive included him grabbing a literal brass ring that he could exchange for a shot at the TNT Championship. That match was used only as a launching point into a heel turn where he'd play second fiddle to Ethan Page. Now, that tag team plays second fiddle to Dan Lambert doing his best Jim Cornette-mixed-with-Charlie Kirk impersonation at every major show. If Sky is the most prominent Black man in the company, who could blame fans that look like him for feeling a bit cold?

The same could really go for any Black wrestler on the roster. Rose, even as Women's Champion, has felt like she's been more backburner than front bench. Big Swole had a big feud with Britt Baker last year, won the blowoff match at All-Out, and then disappeared for almost an entire year. Part of that was injury, but one might think that someone who has a win over the current Women's Champ and biggest homegrown star they've built this side of Hangman Page would have a spot somewhere other than on Dark. Hobbs and Starks have only started their journeys to having more prominence on television, and The Acclaimed suffered punishment for an error that, quite frankly, was more on management and production than on the guy who made the "faux pas" they suspended him for in Max Caster. Sonny Kiss, Shawn Dean, Red Velvet, Anthony Ogogo, "Big Shotty" Lee Johnson, AEW has all these Black names and hasn't really made a good faith effort to try to get them into a main event slot, any new pushes starting now notwithstanding.

The knee-jerk reaction is to compare AEW to WWE, but honestly, you shouldn't. It's great WWE is featuring a robust slate of Black wrestlers, including Big E, whose title win this past Monday was long overdue. That being said, WWE has an undeniable racist history that they have not fully atoned for, and there's always the specter that Big E will lose his title in the same way Bianca Belair and Kofi Kingston lost theirs. But all of that is still immaterial in the fact that representation is not a counting game, a zero-sum affair, or something to post on the goddamn scoreboard. I don't watch WWE regularly (or really, at all), so I can't comment on any improvements made in the last two years. That being said, I do watch AEW, and I have a stake in seeing that company succeed (mainly, so I have something good to continue to watch going forward).

Unfortunately, there's no other answer to this problem except do better at pushing Black wrestlers. How many wrestlers pushed will do? Again, this isn't a counting game. I can't answer it either because I'm not Black. If you ask 100 Black people, it's liable you will get anywhere up to 100 different answers, because no demographic is a monolith either. Some might be happy with one person in the main event. Others may not be satisfied until the entire company is Black on top. But AEW can start by featuring more Black wrestlers on television consistently.

Unlike what Brian Cage things, titles and wins aren't the only thing. They're important, and AEW should maybe consider having Black wrestlers in protected roles in similar ways to members of the Elite, the Inner Circle, and the Pinnacle have been at times. But having a diverse roster up and down in every role doesn't hurt, especially given how many talented and charismatic Black wrestlers are on the roster. They are building up Jade Cargill. She should be ready to be the keystone of the Women's division within a year. They also signed Lee Moriarty, who was until he was signed the best independent wrestler in America. I think Tony Khan, for all his faults, is someone who listens, especially when people turn up the heat on him.

But like all billionaires, he's not going to listen out of the goodness of his heart. He sees the landscape in dollar signs. While I don't think he's as heartless and greed-oriented as Vince McMahon, I'm not sure he's the kind of person who will change the world for the hell of it. If he was, he'd have given away all the money that was personally entrusted to his name. It sucks that the onus for marginalized or underrepresented people to get their due falls on those people, because in that case, the work is almost never done. That's why it's up to people who say they're allies and try to get all the credit for doing the grunt work just for putting trendy little signs on their lawn to keep punching up as well.

Until then, perhaps Cage's dissatisfaction with the company will lead to him leaving. That will create a vacuum of TV time available for someone else to slide into. Luckily enough, Team Taz has two Black wrestlers, one with a silver tongue and one who is built like a Greek god statue carved out of marble, to slide right over and take his spot. Every departure comes with an opportunity. The question is, will AEW keep the concerns of their Black fans, a demographic that has traditionally watched wrestling with its full support even when the representation wasn't there, at the forefront? If Khan and Cody Runnels and Turner Networks are all smart, they will.

Poacher's Delight, Case Number One: Baron Corbin

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 14:30:00 +0000

Corbin, All Elite? Not as shocking as you think
Photo Credit: WWE.com

All Out was the best mainstream American wrestling pay-per-view of all-time even without the shock of all the debuts into All Elite Wrestling. However, those debuts, namely, Bryan Danielson and Adam Cole, have opened a lot of minds to the possibility of big names from WWE leaving the company and signing with AEW not because they've been jettisoned from their deals in cost-cutting measures (the way FTR and Ruby Soho were), but because they now had choices for places of employ. WWE wanted to keep Danielson and Cole, and they couldn't because they refused to offer them things they wanted. Now, other wrestlers may have that option on the table.

All the same bullshit cryptic Twitter "news" accounts are saying the same things, that there will be an exodus to AEW and that it'll be more surprising to see who STAYS with WWE when their contracts are up. Kevin Steen has already teased a reunion with his Pro Wrestling Guerrilla Rushmore stablemates, Cole and the Young Bucks, and according to the new face of pro wrestling news, Sean Ross Sapp, his contract with WWE, where he wrestles as Kevin Owens, is up in January 2022. His buddy Remi Sebei, aka Sami Zayn, has his contract up even earlier. Those guys are no-brainers to make the jump to AEW, which is PWG on a national stage.

But what about the other wrestlers, the ones who seem like WWE lifers or folks who may not seem like fits for a promotion as tailored to the kind of fan AEW courts, at least in the front of one's mind? Truth be told, AEW wants the same fan WWE wants; they're just going about it a whole different way. The question should be, can these wrestlers work in that different way AEW provides? In this series, I will explore some intriguing cases and examine whether they would be good fits in AEW.

First up, Baron Corbin.

The Case For: AEW has a lot of great wrestlers who are able to produce in the ring, and the number of people who scorch the earth on the microphone is a lot higher than some haters will give them credit for. What they don't have are a lot of characters. More accurately, they don't have a lot of character building in the way that people who have been fed on wrestling starting in 1996 are used to. AEW is a wrestling promotion down to the idea that nothing that is shown on camera is done so without tacit admission that the people in the shot know a camera is there except for when it's explicitly stated beforehand that the footage was obtained with a hidden camera.

WWE has poisoned people to think the only way you can build fleshed-out characters is through these pantomimed cinematic skits that clearly everyone in the arena and watching at home can see. I think there's a third way, one that AEW has used to highlight backstage brawls only, or for the odd Inner Circle exposition piece, like Le Dinner Debonair. You don't need to film these situations with the people in the actual situation ignorant of the camera. But you can flesh out characters more than just with superficial gimmicks. In a way, they've done this with Orange Cassidy. Wrestling characters don't need to be that deep, yes, but they shouldn't just be faces in a crowd who have to wait until they main event to have depth.

That's where Corbin comes in. He, in many ways, is the poster child for what WWE wants vs. what fans of wrestling want, but it's not really earned. He told Apollo Crews "GO BACK TO ROH" in a random NXT Takeover match, and suddenly, Fed sycophants used that not as great heeling but as a rallying cry for the invasion of "vanilla midgets" into their good and pure body guy factory. He became a tension point in The Discourse™, when all he was was a former football player who made it through the rigors of his training and navigated NXT as a classic WWE body guy in an era where the push to make it Paul Levesque's boutique super indie was in full thrust.

Still, whatever he was asked to do on the main roster, he did with his whole ass. He was asked to be an administrative assistant to the general manager, and he wrestled in business wear. He was King of the Ring, so he made his entire shtick about royalty. Vince McMahon gave him a trademark, mock-the-heel cruelty gimmick, this time making fun of the poor, and the work he did getting that over was some of the best character work in years. It's that drive that could make him a resonant character in AEW.

The Case Against: AEW has done fine having a dearth of three-dimensional characters, as the goal of wrestling isn't to create lasting art the same way Martin Scorsese does, but to create connections with the crowd to react in the moment and perhaps leave them with a mark that lasts for years. You don't need to make the wrestling equivalent of Raging Bull to do that. Most of the emotion and nuance can be gleaned in the ring anyway. AEW has done an incredible job of cultivating a roster of wrestlers who do that without giving them prolonged exposition on their gimmicks or elaborate, out-of-arena vignettes that explore their motivations. In order to get over in AEW, you need to be able to connect with the crowd either with a microphone in your hand or in the ring.

The question to ask is, can Corbin do that? I'm not convinced he's someone who can thrive in that sort of environment, which would make him jumping from WWE, where he can be supported by creative and management, to AEW, where he wouldn't have the same structures, make sense. Tony Khan has made few signings that don't make sense for him. I'm sure you can have arguments about a few individual cases, but the way AEW has functioned like a well-oiled machine for the two-plus years it has been in existence shows how good their chemistry is. Corbin might be an extraneous ingredient that might end up being destructive.

The Final Word: Is Corbin the square peg that would not fit through AEW's round hole? Or could he be the key to unlocking new and exciting possibilities for Dynamite each week (not Rampage, that show at one hour should stauy focused on the formula)? You won't know unless you try him out, and I feel like he'd be a signing that if he didn't feel loyalty to McMahon and WWE would be worth the spin, as long as Khan and his EVPs knew how to accentuate what he was good at. I wouldn't hate him taking a spin for the Jacksonville territory, as much as it would've shocked me to say that even one year ago.

The TWB Draft: Free Agency

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 16:45:00 +0000

Mauro and Corey, together again
Screengrab via SportsKeeda

When I last left off describing the TWB Draft to one and all, I summarized the actual draft portion. It's called the "TWB Draft," so that should be the most important thing, right? Well, sure, but what good is roster allocation if you don't use it? Twenty-five wrestlers comprise a good start for any promotion, but post-draft, so many other viable wrestlers were left available, as well as all the non-wrestling staff that had now become bereft of employment. The commentators, managers, and agents of the world needed to be signed. Referees, under this plan, would become the domain of the Federal Wrestling Bureau.

After the draft, the six territories were allowed to sign up to 15 more free agent wrestlers as well as assorted staff. While 15 was maximum, the feds were allowed to go under that limit. The first five free agents were signed via waiver order, and everyone has at least five on their roster. Some only signed one additional wrestler past that five, while others took advantage of the full roster space.

Rather than list the free agents, I will compile all the rosters of each promotion here, along with their support staff characters:

ROCKY MOUNTAIN WRESTLING (Moose Bigelow and Andrew Hammond, Rocky Mountain Territory)

Drafted Talent: Bryan Danielson, Adam Cole, Kevin Steen (Owens), WALTER, FTR (Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler), Jade Cargill, Damien Priest, Punishment Martinez (Damien Priest), Thunder Rosa, Andrade El Idolo (Cien Almas/La Sombra), Charlotte Flair, Evie (Dakota Kai), Maxwell Jacob Friedman, Jeff Cobb, Chad Gable, Otis, "Filthy" Tom Lawlor, Powerhouse Hobbs, Ronda Rousey, Kris Statlander, Grado, Jonah Rock (Bronson Reed), Calvin Tankman, The Briscoe Brothers (Jay and Mark)

Free Agent Talent: Negative One, Desmond Xzavier (Wes Lee), Zachary Wentz (Nash Carter), Christopher Daniels (Curry Man), Brody King (Mike "The Rock" Davis... YOU GOTTA GIVE), Sefa Fatu, Colby Corino, Team Sea Stars (Delmi Exo and Ashley Vox), Tre Lamar, Josh Barnett

Staff: Joe Martinez, Ian Riccaboni, David Arqette, Pat McAfee, Kurt Angle, Jerry Jarrett

LONE STAR WRESTLING (AJ Morgan, World Class Territory)

Drafted Talent: Roman Reigns, Becky Lynch (Knox), Baron Corbin, Big E (Langston), The New Day (Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods/Austin Creed), Sami Zayn (El Generico), Shinsuke Nakamura, Shayna Baszler, Drew Galloway (McIntyre), Seth Rollins (Tyler Black), Courtney Rush (Rosemary), Mustafa Ali, Danhausen, Jessie McKay (Billie Kay), Adam Scherr (Braun Strowman), Effy, Allie Kat (Katch), Colt Cabana, Johnny Curtis (Fandango), Tyler Breeze, Johnny Gargano, Mansoor, Suge D (Sugar Dunkerton)

Free Agent Talent: Max The Impaler, Big Swole, Sonny Kiss, Big Callux (The Castigator), MV Young, Gino Medina, Fuego del Sol, Hermit Crab, Cajun Crawdad, Thief Ant, Billy Dixon, AC Mack, Edith Surreal, Matthew Rehwoldt (Aiden English), Willow Nightengale

Staff: Michael Cole, Jim Ross, Renee Paquette (Young), Freddie Prinze, Jr, Mick Foley, Cheeseburger, Kevin von Erich, Alicia Atout

WORLD ASS CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING (Brett R. and Nick Piccone, Southeastern Territory)

Drafted Talent: Adam "Hangman" Page, CM Punk, Jon Moxley, Britt Baker DMD, The Street Profits (Montez Ford and Angelo Dawkins), Bayley (Davina Rose), The Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson), Alexa Bliss, Pete Dunne, The Rock, the Usos (Jey and Jimmy), John Cena, Naomi, Randy Orton, Hikaru Shida, Nyla Rose, Kenny Omega, The Miz, the Jurassic Express (Luchasaurus and Jungle Boy), Samoa Joe, Kay Lee Ray

Free Agent Talent: Sonya Deville, Johnny World Ass (John Morrison), Scorpio Sky, Tegan Nox, Shotzi Blackheart, Anthony Ogogo, Cassie Lee (Peyton Royce), Cherry Bomb (Bunny/Allie), Jinder Mahal, Red Velvet, Elias, Angel Garza, Xia Li, Ron Killings (R-Truth), Edge

Staff: Beth Phoenix, Ric Flair, MVP, Bret Hart, Todd Pettengill, TJ Wilson (Tyson Kidd), Michael Hayes, Michael Buffer, Kayla Braxton, Stacy Keibler

MIDWEST FEDERATION OF WRESTLING (Chris G., Midwestern Territory)

Drafted Talent: Windham Rotunda (Bray Wyatt), Sasha Banks (Mercedes KV/Varnado), Cody Rhodes, Nick Gage, Drew Gulak, Bobby Lashley, Rush, Wardlow, Tay Conti, Ruby Soho, Matt Cardona, Biff Busick (Oney Lorcan), Omos, Serena Deeb, Bill Goldberg, LA Park, Fred Yehi, Chris Dickinson, Homicide, Hideki Suzuki (Hachiman), AR Fox, Arez, Mickie Knuckles, Joshua Bishop, Gnarls Garvin

Free Agent Talent: Sareee (Sarray), Christian Cage, Mascara Dorada (Gran Metalik), Tony Deppen, Mercedes Martinez, John Wayne Murdoch, Sam Shaw (Dexter Lumis), Matthew Justice, Mance Warner, Dr. Luther, El Hijo del LA Park, LA Park, Jr., Rik Bugez, Gangrel

Staff: Tazz, Tony Schiavone, Salina de la Renta, Dylan Hales, Dan Lambert, Britani Knight (Paige)

INTERNATIONAL WRESTLING FEDERATION (Geo Hellraiser, Jonny Law, and Jim Taggart, Northeastern Territory)

Drafted Talent: Brock Lesnar, Pentagon, Jr. (Penta El Cero Miedo), Rey Fenix, Malakai Black (Tommy End), Miro, Proud n Powerful (Santana and Ortiz), Jacob Fatu, Prince Devitt (Finn Balor), Tommaso Ciampa, Timothy Thatcher, Sheamus, Buddy Matthews (Murphy), The Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin), Kyle O'Reilly, Josh Alexander, Moustache Mountain (Tyler Bate and Trent Seven), Ricky Starks, Alex Hammerstone, El Legado del Fantasma (Raul Mendoza and DJ Z/Joaquin Wilde), Santos Escobar, Sammy Guevara

Free Agent Talent: Jonathan Gresham, Chris Hero, Donovan Dijak (T-Bar), Brennan Williams (Mace), CJ Perry (Lana), Bear Country (Bear Bronson and Bear Boulder), Private Party (Marq Quen and Isaiah Kassidy), Jake Atlas, Austin Theory, Black Taurus, Ikeman Jiro, Odyssey Jones, Daniel Makabe

Staff: Stokely Hathaway (Malcolm Bivens), Shawn Michaels, Corey Graves, Mauro Ranallo, Maria Kanellis, Bobby Cruise, Jamie Noble, Joey Mercury

PACIFIC CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING (Butch Rosser, West Coast Territory)

Drafted Talent: Claudio Castagnoli (Cesaro), Eddie Kingston, Bianca Belair, Meiko Satomura, KANA (Asuka), Keith Lee, Rhea Ripley, Orange Cassidy, AJ Styles, Io Shirai, Jordynne Grace, PAC, Ricochet, Toni Storm, Shane Strickland (Isaiah "Swerve" Scott), Kamille, KUSHIDA, Nikki Storm (Cross/ASH), Tenille Dashwood, Rey Mysterio, Mil Muertes (Ricky Banderas), Athena (Ember Moon), Jordan Devlin, Willie Mack, Leyla Hirsch

Free Agent Talent: Rey Horus, Trevor Lee (Cameron Grimes), Ilja Dragunov, Indi Hartwell, Cedric Alexander, Jamie Hayter

Staff: Tom Phillips, Veda Scott, Stu Bennett (Wade Barrett), Excalibur, Nigel McGuinness

This exercise will be judged and will have a winner, but that judgment is in two different phases. The first phase is complete. Roster-building is the key to a good promotion, and I have a panel of judges at the ready to evaluate the talent as situated. The promotions will have to book their first pay-per-view cycle, and that will be judged separately. What fun is a roster if you don't play with it? Make sure you keep your eyes peeled here for the latest in the TWB Draft.

The Best Wrestling Pay-Per-View, Ever: An All Out 2021 Conceptual Review

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 16:40:00 +0000

He's here

The last time I did one of these "conceptual reviews," I called Double or Nothing earlier this year the "best show since WrestleMania XXX." I thought it would be hard to top, especially with such a rushed build and the lack of All Elite Wrestling's rising star and possible Most Valuable Wrestler, Hangman Page. With his desire to be present for the birth of his first child, a desire that I understand, support, and think AEW was absolutely correct to accommodate, the presumed tension point at the top of the card was out the window. They replaced him with Christian Cage, which I thought was something you'd do for one of those heretofore unnamed Clash of the Champion-tribute shows they're going to start running next year, not for their biggest show of the year.

My premonition was wrong. Dead wrong.

They ramped up the build, throwing marquee match after marquee match into the fray, matches that on paper appealed to viewers at large, a group in which I include myself, with great power. The Young Bucks vs. the Lucha Brothers. Britt Baker, DMD vs. Kris Statlander. Miro vs. Eddie Kingston. Jon Moxley vs. Satoshi Kojima. PAC vs. Andrade El Idolo. Then they went out and signed the biggest possible free agent name that they could, CM Punk, a man who had become a rallying cry for the disaffected wrestling fan watching the other company's slop. Then the other rumors started to swirl around of other names, like Ruby Soho, who was callously thrown out the damn door in the name of "budget cuts," or Adam Cole, a prize NXT name whom Vince McMahon chased out the door with a stubborn desire to control all outside income (in his case, streaming), or the top prize, Bryan Danielson, who made his money and maybe wanted to go out on his own terms and not like a Stan Chera putting over Roman Reigns every week.

Matches on paper, however, can remain pipe dreams. In fact, the lead-up to All Out saw PAC/Andrade taken off the card because of the former's "travel issues." Debuts can be nice, but they can't paper over bad angles or matches that don't work. A show needs execution, top to bottom. All Out 2021 had execution in addition to the excitement and the returns and debuts and the hype. Let's get into it, match by match.

Miro vs. Eddie Kingston - AEW has always been a "strong opener" promotion, and you can look at the various shows they've run for the proof, even back to the first Dynamite where Cody Rhodes took to mat with a spry and frisky youngster named Sammy Guevara. I thought Miro and Kingston had the juice to have the best match on the card, which lines up with AEW's philosophy, but man, they really did go out and just try to kick the shit out of each other with that first spot on the main show. Tony Khan can tell me that the pre-show is the same as the main show all he wants, but you and I both know he's just trying to sell something.

Anyway, the best matches in wrestling occur when the stakes are personal and the competitors look like they're kicking the shit out of each other. These two roughnecks didn't have much time to put kindle on the fire, but I think Kingston telling Miro that he didn't believe in his God and to redeem deez nuts (a top two moment in AEW history, and I'm not sure it's number two) sprayed lighter fluid on the flame they sparked. There was absolutely no question Miro, who has made his name on brutalizing anyone he's gotten into the ring with since arriving in AEW, and Kingston, a guy who has made his name walking the King's Road and respecting the joshis in his career, would deliver on the latter. This match was brutal and set a tone that the next three matches would build upon. The finish left room open for a return match, probably in Queens in a few weeks with an extra added stipulation for fun. Miro actually did "redeem deez nuts" with a mule kick to them, so if you're a fan of testicular puns like I am, strap in. It's gonna get even better.

Jon Moxley vs. Satoshi Kojima - Mox got a taste of the New Japan oldheads when he defended his IWGP United States Championship against Yuji Nagata a few months back and wanted more. Luckily for everyone else, the old guys still have, to paraphrase Mark Henry, a lot left in the tank. Kojima was the next on the docket, and despite some protestations from the less learned on Twitter, this match invariably delivered in ways that Jon Moxley throwing hands with guys who may or may not value their own self-preservation tend to do. Kojima built a reputation throwing a nasty right arm at the heads of his opponents, the perfect foe for post-Championship Moxley. This one didn't have the personal stakes the opening match did, but what it lacked in invitations to redeem deez nuts (sorry, I can't get over that, I love it so much), it made up for in snug brutality.

You could tell Kojima was trying to win over a crowd that probably didn't regard him as highly as some of New Japan's other, bigger names, and his methods worked. Whether it was clubbing on Mox like he was a bongo drum or shaking his pecs like Narcissist-era Lex Luger, Kojima won over the crowd in short order. The match was worked incredibly smartly around Mox avoiding the lariat, and it didn't overstay its welcome too long. Two Death Riders, one normal and one brainbuster-style, took Kojima out, and afterwards, Moxley showed respect to his elder.

And then "Kaze Ni Nare" hit on the speakers.

On one hand, I would've preferred Moxley's next New Japan Grandpa Tour date to be against Kojima's partner, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, mainly because Mox/Minoru Suzuki has happened before. On the other, Suzuki, even in his 50s, is still one of the most vicious and intelligent workers on the planet. There will always be time to run Mox/Tenzan. Suzuki, however, is already in the states, and he has a bloodlust that can never, ever be satiated, not until he's dead. Even then, I assume he will breaking the arms of incorporeal beings in whatever afterlife to which he's assigned.

Britt Baker, DMD vs. Kris Statlander - A lot is made of Baker's transformation into a stage-ready wrestlers in her time between turn and ascension, but Statlander, who was one of the finest wrestlers on the indie scene before she signed with AEW, had a bit of a feeling out process she had to go through. Her growing pains were noticeable; I didn't get the same pop from her in the big rings that I did when she was dominating the field for Beyond Wrestling et al. This match was where she looked the most comfortable since signing, and once again, perhaps the key was getting into a feud with an opponent where they felt comfortable beating the piss out of each other.

Violence and snugness continued to be the theme of the night through main match three, as Statlander's kicks landed with a bit more oomph, and Baker's orneriness shone through just a bit more than it had. Even though the build did feel a bit truncated and might have been overshadowed with AEW's horrendous booking of Red Velvet as a babyface against Baker in her hometown of Pittsburgh on the first airing of Rampage, the end result felt every bit the title fight that it needed to be. The crowd recognized it too, because after two hard-hitting matches with the dudes to start the main show, Baker and Statlander garnered the first "This Is Awesome" chant of the night. It was more than earned. The ending sequence with the counters ending into the Lockjaw fit the bill, and Baker's first PPV title defense was a rousing success.

The Young Bucks vs. the Lucha Brothers - When I saw the Lucha Brothers beat out Jurassic Express for the right to get a title shot inside a cage, I reduced it down to Rey Fenix doing something absolutely bonkers inside a cage. That did happen; boy, did it happen. I didn't think this particular feud had enough recent momentum to carry a gimmick match, especially when Luchasaurus and Jungle Boy had just been screwed out of their title opportunity a few shows prior. The thing about true rivals, however, is that you don't need to throw a lot of wood on the fire to make the blaze burn with the intensity of the effigy at Burning Man. Two years ago, the Bucks and the Bros tore the house down at the first All Out. Penta El Cero Miedo and Fenix aren't two guys who shy away from spotlight. The Brothers Jackson have developed into stunning dickheads to the point where their very presence in a match will set a crowd ablaze. The recipe was perfect for something perfect to evolve inside of that cage.

As much as Fenix was the star of the match, just as he's the star of nearly any match he sets his foot into, the real story was the burgeoning inhumanity of the Bucks. It wasn't just the infamous Thumbtack Jordan, although the spots centered around that shoe were gory and brutal, the kind of wrestling violence I revel in. It was the use of their athleticism and their tendency to do, as their most ardent haters call, gymnastics to set up counters that showed they were mostly two steps ahead of their opponents the whole match. They were the most able villains in the company, a role they relish, but also one they're obviously quite good at.

Still, sometimes, you know the outcome of a match before the entrances are over. Entrances, after all, are the first impression you get from an act when they come into an arena, and the Lucha Bros getting a live rapper and the ornate Aztec-inspired headgear as they swaggered down the aisle towards the cage portended a triumph for them. Anything short would be McMahon-levels of contempt for his crowd. They earned it, too, all punctuated with Fenix's stage dive from the top of the cage. Honestly, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a match in AEW's history that is clearly better than this one. You could have discussions. Matches like the Thunder Rosa/Britt Baker Lights Out match or the Bucks/Omega and Hangman match or even the bloody Rhodes Family Brawl from the first Double or Nothing (Which I haven't seen and am, for the sake of this comparison, only going by reputation for) might make compelling arguments, but I'm not sure I can see them and automatically say "yes, YES" as to whether they're better.

Casino Battle Royale - I've always been a huge fan of the Casino Battle Royale because no matter what the conceit is, it's a match that gets everyone exposure on the pay-per-view. This time, it was the women's turn. AEW has had a checkered reputation with their women's roster, and even though they had to be cajoled into putting it on the roster as a replacement for Andrade and PAC being bumped, the competitors made the match pop. I'm not sure I've seen a bad Casino Battle Royale, so the baseline was always high. Still, you're not getting the 1992 Royal Rumble every time out. Each one is going to be punctuated by moments, more so than any other match archetype.

There were some questionable eliminations, sure. I'm not sure why the longest-reigning Women's Champion, Hikaru Shida, got dumped so early and unceremoniously. Red Velvet and Emi Sakura spent comparatively little time in the match too. But the big spots, like Abadon scaring the shit out of Sakura and Shida, or Nyla Rose betraying Jade Cargill and dumping her on her ass, or the reunion of Tay Conti and Anna Jay to team up against Penelope Ford and The Bunny were all nice moments. All of them paled in comparison to the debut of Ruby Soho, obviously. The former Ruby Riott/Heidi Lovelace entered in the final position and won the match, but how she won was notable because it provided a glimpse into a better future for a division that kinda needs it right now. The first glimpse saw her interacting with Cargill. If you want the statuesque wrestler of the future to get good quick, a few matches with Soho will get her there. Secondly, the finishing sequence with Thunder Rosa was tense and brutal, especially their whole joust on the apron to finish completely. It wasn't just the moves or how hard they looked, but the timing. All in all, it was a successful battle royale.

MJF vs. Chris Jericho - The build for this match felt compacted, and I had to wonder what it was that had them go from the fifth labor and a third, relatively clean victory for MJF to this match two weeks later. I don't know if it was the compression, or the utter front-loading of the card before this match, or the fact that there hasn't been a successful retirement stip implemented north of the Rio Grande since Ric Flair, but the crowd didn't get into things until the end. I don't like to pretend that an arbitrary measure of quality cajoles the crowd to react commensurately, but man, there were more than a few rough stretches in the early going of that match. Specifically, the stretch where they went outside that ended in an awkward-looking apron powerbomb from Jericho.

The other thing to take home is that for a promotion that was founded by one of Dusty Rhodes' kids, the fact that it took two years and change to use the Dusty Finish. I wasn't sure it was the way to go, but then again, the crowd loved it. They were happy to see Jericho finally prevail, I suppose. It was kinda like the Juventud Guerrera match from Dynamite a few weeks back. It was sloppy as hell, and neither wrestler looked good in it, but the crowd appreciated it so it was a success, I suppose? Either way, the important thing here is that MJF and Jericho should probably never interact with each other again. MJF, actually, should probably start getting heated up for a title run sometime after the new year. But I'm getting too far ahead of myself.

CM Punk vs. Darby Allin - It's so hard to write anything substantive around Darby Allin because the accusations around him are so pervasive, and no one seems to care. People who will rightfully grill WWE for having Matt Riddle around or signing Gable Steveson or even for the fact that that company is owned by an accused rapist who may have covered up a murder will hand-wave Allin because he showed some texts to Tony Khan or whatever. Being a wrestling fan is almost like being force-fed spoonfuls of shit on the reg, whether or not those spoonfuls are the main course like with WWE or whether they're interstitials between feelgood moments like with nearly every other promotion on the planet. With AEW, that spoonful of shit is Allin, who is a good wrestler, but one you have to feel dirty rightfully pointing out how good he is because he's such a creep who constantly has gotten away with being a creep.

It's almost immaterial to write about this match after going through that mental rigor (and it's something I have to do EVERY FUCKING TIME THAT LITTLE TWERP WRESTLES), but CM Punk only returns to the ring after seven years once. The first thing Punk did in the ring was throw some respect the way of the guy whose t-shirt he wore Friday night on Rampage:

Did anyone catch @CMPunk’s homage to @BretHart???!!!

1-2-3 kid vs Bret Hart/Cm Punk vs Farby Allin #sidebyside #CMPunkisAllElite #cmpunk #darbyallin @DarbyAllin @TheRealXPac #AEW pic.twitter.com/CtzPBZQGPU
— PINNLAND EMPIRE (@PINNLAND_EMPIRE) September 6, 2021

Punk isn't the most athletic guy, but what he is is cerebral. Intelligence will get you so much further in wrestling than it will in any other athletic endeavor, mainly because the results are predetermined, obviously. Still, the yin of Punk's brains with the yang of Allin's visceral desire to put himself in harm's way with bumps few people would ever dream of taking made this, for better or worse, the ideal comeback match for Punk. As Maxwell (formerly of the RBR Wrestling Show) pointed out during his watch, the match was methodical, but not plodding. That was the subtle foreshadowing of a future Punk turn. The not-so-subtle foreshadowing, to me at least, occurred when Punk hit the first GTS that sent Allin careening out of the ring. He was content to take a countout, which is classic heel behavior. I don't know if this turn is coming sooner rather than later, (and an Allin turn might be in the cards too if his post-match demeanor was any indication) but one thing is certain. Punk is back. And I don't think he's going to take long to shake the rest of his ring rust off.

"No More BS" Paul Wight vs. QT Marshall - The piss-break match at Double or Nothing was a self-absorbed, self-indulgent wankfest between Cody Rhodes and one of his pupils. This one was the exact opposite. They promised you NO MORE BS, and Paul Wight cleared out the BS in short order. He punched Nick Cormorato in the face. He threw Aaron Solow halfway to Des Moines. He chokeslammed QT Marshall to a realm lower than hell. Bing, bang, boom, done, and if that's not your thing, well, you had a chance to gas up before the main event. It wasn't a "great" match, but really, it was fun, and it served a purpose.

Kenny Omega vs. Christian Cage - The all-Canadian main event was put in a rough spot, partially because Cage isn't Hangman Page, and partially, through no fault of their own, they were victims of what was going to happen after the match. It was the same sort of thing AEW set itself up for for The First Dance. Rumors and hearsay pinned big debuts for the end of the match may have kept the crowd silent. Perhaps it was the fact that Cage already pinned Omega on the first Rampage, and no one believed they would have him pin him a second time.

The mark of a great match though is pulling a crowd into your thrall even when they don't buy the result or they're preoccupied. It took them a little bit, but Omega and Cage had the fans eating out of the palms of their hands with big spots, big bumps, and creative use of tables. The first one, a more unorthodox use, felt fresh and innovative even if it was just Omega stomping Cage while he was on the ground through one. The more traditional table spot later, when Cage speared Omega through a set-up one from the apron, looked even more vicious than normal because of the way it broke, with the metal leg bursting through. Through all those big spots and everything else, all the way up to the avalanche One Winged Angel, these two guys busted their ass, surpassed their Pittsburgh match, and proved that in a normal wrestling company, crowds will appreciate hard work even if it's not what they were expecting.

But then they got what they wanted afterwards, because if you eat your vegetables, Papa Tony will reward you with dessert. Then again, calling a match like this main event "vegetables" might be a bit trite, or accurate if you're like me and enjoy eating them. Seriously, roast some brussels sprouts with olive oil and balsamic, or grill some asparagus. Your life will change. But I digress. The original fakeout with Adam Cole debuting only to continue the beatdown on Cage and his reinforcements, Jurassic Express, almost made the standard Elite Standing Tall trope palatable. But then Bryan Danielson came out, evened the odds, and everything was golden again. There was hope, and it was in the form of the greatest professional wrestler ever to live or breathe on this planet entering a company that is better equipped to handle him in his post-WrestleMania XXX stardom than any company ever to exist.

Overall - All Elite Wrestling is arguably one fireworks mishap and a Cody Rhodes wankfest from having three all-time perfect pay-per-view events in the calendar year of 2021. Maybe it's years of having WWE and TNA being the only game in town on PPV that has wrecked expectation of a modern supercard being as much a grab-bag as they were in the days when the matches were never nearly as robust in quality as the talking about them beforehand was. For a few years there, I was starting to feel my wrestling fandom wane into something like a habit I couldn't kick. I'm not going to lie and say All Out was the only show that sparked me back into hyperdrive. AAA's TripleMania from a few weeks ago was tremendous, and not surprisingly, more than a few of the same players worked both shows.

But for as much of a quality wrestling show as Double or Nothing was, All Out took the next steps, even if the match quality was roughly the same on either event. With All Out and the debuts of Soho, Cole, and Danielson (as well as the revelation of Suzuki as the next one through the Forbidden Door and that Punk still has it), it was a pay-per-view that captured the certain elan of wrestling when World Championship Wrestling was still active, and there were still opportunities to jump between promotions of similar stature. It was a show that appealed to every facet, every generation of my wrestling fandom that I can't help but say that it is the best mainstream wrestling show that I have ever seen. There were no utterly indefensible booking decisions. There were no matches that would be embarrasing to show on a theoretical "full developmental" version of NXT. There were moments, oh man, were there moments. I would be shocked if history was unkind to this show. I fully recommend you go back and watch it if you weren't fortunate enough to be there or view it live.

RIP Daffney Unger

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 14:30:00 +0000

Daffney, shown here at a 2011 meet and greet, passed away September 1
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein

Shannon Spruill, better known from her performing days in World Championship Wrestling and the independent circuit as Daffney Unger or Shark Girl, passed away Wednesday night. She was 46. Spruill had shown erratic behavior on Instagram Live, which had sparked concern across all the people she had touched over her career across social media and real life. Attempts were made to send help to her house, but she died before they could arrive. During her Instagram Live session, she had made reference to wanting her brain to be studied for signs of CTE from her wrestling career. This desire has shown to be common among suicidal people from industries, like wrestling, American football, and hockey, with increased risk for head trauma. The most notable among these was former NFL linebacker Junior Seau, who took his own life after requesting his brain be studied.

Spruill began her career in the WCW Power Plant at a time when there weren't many womeni n mainstream American wrestling. Because of this, she would be seen rightfully as one of the trailblazing figures in women's wrestling, along with Chyna, and later on, Trish Stratus and Lita. Specifically, WCW did not have as robust a women's division as even the then-World Wrestling Federation. As Daffney Unger, she started out her career in WCW as a manager for Crowbar and David Flair. Daffney was not presented as many other female wrestling characters were at the time. The WWF's reliance on traditional sex appeal pigeonholed women in wrestling into a specific, awfully sexist box. Daffney broke that mold much in the same way Chyna did in the WWF, except where Chyna was a staggering, muscular figure who could go blow for blow with the men, Daffney's appeal was to the burgeoning alternative scene at the time with emphasis on dark clothing and dour and eccentric personality.

Daffney quickly became a fan favorite due to her aesthetic and her ability to let out eardrum-piercing screams, garnering her the nickname "Scream Queen." By 2000, she was an active wrestler, going against men and women and even winning the Cruiserweight Championship, albeit in the same sort of bullshit way Vince Russo would book non-traditional competitors to win titles. Despite the "accidental" way she won that title, her popularity never allowed her to garner the same tarnish that David Arquette or Russo himself would for winning the World Championship. Daffney was one of the most popular figures in late WCW, but the company would go on to release her before the WWF bought the company out.

Daffney's second act in wrestling came as a mentor on the independent scene. Imbued with a rebellious yet hard-working spirit that didn't allow her to coast on her fame, she competed across a wide swath of indies, including most notably SHIMMER Women Athletes. She wrestled there both as her traditional persona and under the Shark Girl mask. Nicole Matthews credits her with "changing her career" at SHIMMER Vol. 17. Daffney's indie career would be inextricably linked with Rachel Summerlyn, both in SHIMMER and Anarchy Championship Wrestling.

Daffney also had a short stint in TNA Wrestling, and although her time there was, as mentioned, short, it was important. She was thrust into the ring against a green Bubba Ray Dudley trainee, Rosie Lottalove, who concussed her with a stiff powerbomb. Spruill would sue TNA for medical damages, and even though the company tried to play the chickenshit WWE independent contractor card to shirk paying for her injuries, she was able to force TNA to settle with her out of court, striking perhaps the most significant blow against the model by which wrestling companies operate. Although WWE has not felt the ramifications of that decision, the case changed the way other companies did business. However, the concussion she suffered may have played a role in the depression that afflicted her. Depression, after all, is a nasty symptom of CTE.

Most importantly, Daffney was one of the kindest and most beloved people ever to work within an industry that can foster terrible people and worse attitudes from folks who go into it in better spirits. No one, and I mean no one, has ever said a cross word about her, and many have credited her with helping them out along the way. As is the case with so many people in this industry, especially women, wrestling didn't treat her with the same kindness she showed all the time. The outpouring of concern before her fate was known and the tidal wave of sadness and remembrance that peers and fans alike have shown reflect the kind of person she chose to be.

Writing these memorials is never easy, especially for the people for whom early death feels vastly unfair. It was hard for Hana Kimura, who would have turned 24 today. It was hard for writers in the wrestling community like Larry Csonka and Casey Michael, both of whom succumbed to rare diseases. And it's hard for Shannon Spruill, Daffney, someone who left such an imprint on this world both with her on-screen persona and her deeds as a real person. I can only hope that her family and friends can find peace. They deserve it, just as Spruill deserves to rest in peace.

The TWB Draft: The Results of the Draft

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 14:30:00 +0000

Which territory got this as their top feud?
Photo Credit: WWE.com

You know the story so far. The McMahon family and WWE braintrust have been compromised to a perman... I mean, they're in jail. The post-apocalyptic landscape of wrestling is in disarray. Luckily, six regional promotions have sprung up to fill the void in North America under the central authority of the Federal Wrestling Bureau. As a review, those six promotions are as follows:

International Wrestling Federation (Northeast and Maritimes)
World Ass Championship Wrestling (Southeast)
Midwest Federation of Wrestling (Midwest and Central Provinces)
Lone Star Wrestling (Texas and the Southwest)
Rocky Mountain Wrestling (Mountain States and Provinces)
Pacific Championship Wrestling (West Coast and Hawaii)

These promotions got together and drafted 25 wrestlers out of the greater pool of signed talent to major North American companies as well as any independent wrestlers working primarily in the United States and Canada. The results yielded some pretty interesting rosters to start out with. The rules were simple. Anyone who wasn't injured to the point of retirement was eligible. A promotion could pick one member of a regular tag team and reserve the other member for their next pick. If they passed on the other tag team member, that wrestler was put back into the pool. Everything went swimmingly, as there were no fistfights between any of the promotional staff. One might say no bad blood would be a failure, but the real battles will take place on their various programming timeslots.

For those who are familiar with fantasy football, you'll recognize the process. The FWB picked the first round order at random and then reversed it for round two. The order would go for 23 more rounds, a process called a "serpentine draft." There were a lot of picks that made sense, and there were a fair share of surprises. Here's how the draft played out:

Round 1

1. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Bryan Danielson

2. Lone Star Wrestling - Roman Reigns

3. World Ass Championship Wrestling - "Hangman" Adam Page

4. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Bray Wyatt

5. International Wrestling Federation - Brock Lesnar

6. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Claudio Castagnoli/Cesaro

Basically, there are no real surprises, although each pick comes with their own caveats. Danielson is Danielson; everyone knows his quality. He is winding down though. Reigns has owned Smackdown for a year, but this run has come on the heels of several false starts. Hangman is over as hell, but he hasn't been crowned yet. Is taking him this high projecting too far? Wyatt might have been the safest pick at four, but can he do something other than sPoOkY? Lesnar is talented and fearsome, but how much is he willing to work? Finally, Castagnoli is a workhorse and someone with star potential ahead of his push almost constantly, but is he more valuable than someone like Kenny Omega or Bobby Lashley? I'm not answering any of these questions here, because I am also judging, but these are all valid questions that people need to ask.

Round 2

1. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Eddie Kingston

2. International Wrestling Federation - Pentagon, Jr.

3. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Sasha Banks

4. World Ass Championship Wrestling - CM Punk

5. Lone Star Wrestling - Becky Lynch

6. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Adam Cole

The west coast will get Chikara's hottest feud ever. Kingston feels like a small surprise in round two, but it's a solid bookend to their round one selection. Penta is not a shock given how much he carried Lucha Underground. Banks being the first woman selected was slightly shocking, but it's not like the number one woman on my board, Lynch, went too far after her. The Punk pick was prescient since the draft actually happened before he returned to AEW. Cole rounding out the first cycle makes sense given that he's now a huge free agent.

Round 3

1. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Kevin Owens

2. Lone Star Wrestling - Baron Corbin

3. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Jon Moxley

4. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Cody Rhodes

5. International Wrestling Federation - Rey Fenix

6. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Bianca Belair

Corbin going ahead of Mox was a bit of a surprise, but then again, the Baron is doing the best character work of his life right now. Owens is a no-brainer pick. Rhodes has cache, even though he's teased retirement. Fenix might be the best wrestler in the world right now, and Belair might be the next megastar in the biz.

Round 4

1. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Meiko Satomura

2. International Wrestling Federation - Tommy End/Malakai Black

3. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Nick Gage

4. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Britt Baker, DMD

5. Lone Star Wrestling - Big E Langston

6. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - WALTER

At the end of four rounds, you can see the kinds of companies that these territories would become, and over the next 21 rounds, those visions would be fleshed out. I'm not going to give commentary out of any of these other rounds, but you can see for yourself and see how these rosters initially fleshed out.

Round 5

1. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Dax Harwood

2. Lone Star Wrestling - Xavier Woods

3. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Montez Ford

4. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Drew Gulak

5. International Wrestling Federation - Miro

6. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Asuka/KANA

Round 6

1. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Keith Lee

2. International Wrestling Federation - Santana

3. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Bobby Lashley

4. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Angelo Dawkins

5. Lone Star Wrestling - Kofi Kingston

6. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Cash Wheeler

Round 7

1. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Jade Cargill

2. Lone Star Wrestling - Sami Zayn/Remi Sebei

3. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Bayley

4. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Rush

5. International Wrestling Federation - Ortiz

6. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Rhea Ripley

Round 8

1. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Orange Cassidy

2. International Wrestling Federation - Jacob Fatu

3. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Wardlow

4. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Matt Jackson

5. Lone Star Wrestling - Shinsuke Nakamura

6. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Damien Priest

Round 9

1. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Thunder Rosa

2. Lone Star Wrestling - Shayna Baszler

3. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Nick Jackson

4. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Tay Conti

5. International Wrestling Federation - Finn Balor

6. Pacific Championship Wrestling - AJ Styles

Round 10

1. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Io Shirai

2. International Wrestling Federation - Tommaso Ciampa

3. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Ruby Soho

4. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Alexa Bliss

5. Lone Star Wrestling - Drew Galloway/McIntyre

6. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Charlotte Flair

Round 11

1. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Andrade El Idolo

2. Lone Star Wrestling - Seth Rollins

3. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Pete Dunne

4. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Matt Cardona

5. International Wrestling Federation - Timothy Thatcher

6. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Jordynne Grace

Round 12

1. Pacific Championship Wrestling - PAC

2. International Wrestling Federation - Sheamus

3. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Biff Busick/Oney Lorcan

4. World Ass Championship Wrestling - The Rock (this pick made the Discord honk like geese)

5. Lone Star Wrestling - Courtney Rush/Rosemary

6. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Dakota Kai

Round 13

1. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - MJF

2. Lone Star Wrestling - Mustafa Ali

3. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Jey Uso

4. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Omos

5. International Wrestling Federation - Buddy Matthews/Murphy

6. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Ricochet

Round 14

1. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Toni Storm

2. International Wrestling Federation - Alex Shelley

3. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Serena Deeb

4. World Ass Championship Wrestling - John Cena

5. Lone Star Wrestling - Danhausen

6. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Jeff Cobb

Round 15

1. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Chad Gable

2. Lone Star Wrestling - Billie Kay/Jessie McKay

3. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Naomi

4. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Bill Goldberg

5. International Wrestling Federation - Chris Sabin

6. Pacific Championship Wrestling - "Swerve" Isaiah Scott

Round 16

1. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Kamille

2. International Wrestling Federation - Kyle O'Reilly

3. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - LA Park

4. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Randy Orton

5. Lone Star Wrestling - Braun Strowman

6. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - OTIS

Round 17

1. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - "Filthy" Tom Lawlor

2. Lone Star Wrestling - Effy

3. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Hikaru Shida

4. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Fred Yehi

5. International Wrestling Federation - Josh Alexander

6. Pacific Championship Wrestling - KUSHIDA

Round 18

1. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Nikki Storm/Cross/ASH

2. International Wrestling Federation - Tyler Bate

3. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Chris Dickinson

4. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Nyla Rose

5. Lone Star Wrestling - Allie Kat(ch)

6. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Powerhouse Hobbs

Round 19

1. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Ronda Rousey

2. Lone Star Wrestling - Colt Cabana

3. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Kenny Omega

4. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Homicide

5. International Wrestling Federation - Trent Seven

6. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Tenille Dashwood

Round 20

1. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Rey Mysterio

2. International Wrestling Federation - Ricky Starks

3. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Hachiman/Hideki Suzuki

4. World Ass Championship Wrestling - The Miz

5. Lone Star Wrestling - Fandango

6. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Kris Statlander

Round 21

1. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Grado

2. Lone Star Wrestling - Tyler Breeze

3. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Luchasaurus

4. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - AR Fox

5. International Wrestling Federation - Alex Hammerstone

6. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Mil Muertes

Round 22

1. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Ember Moon

2. International Wrestling Federation - Raul Mendoza

3. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Arez

4. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Jimmy Uso

5. Lone Star Wrestling - Johnny Gargano

6. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Bronson Reed

Round 23

1. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Calvin Tankman

2. Lone Star Wrestling - WARHORSE

3. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Samoa Joe

4. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Mickie Knuckles

5. International Wrestling Federation - Santos Escobar

6. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Jordan Devlin

Round 24

1. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Willie Mack

2. International Wrestling Federation - Joaquin Wilde

3. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Joshua Bishop

4. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Jungle Boy

5. Lone Star Wrestling - Mansoor

6. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Jay Briscoe

Round 25

1. Rocky Mountain Wrestling - Mark Briscoe

2. Lone Star Wrestling - Suge D

3. World Ass Championship Wrestling - Kay Lee Ray

4. Midwest Federation of Wrestling - Gnarls Garvin

5. International Wrestling Federation - Sammy Guevara

6. Pacific Championship Wrestling - Leyla Hirsch

So that's the whole draft. When I come back with the next post-McMahon landscape update, there will be free agent signings, staff signings, and roster judging. Keep your eyes peeled.

Don't Cut Yourself on the Edge(Lord) of the Knife

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 14:30:00 +0000

Lambert has fire, but does he fit on a "progressive" show?
Screengrab courtesy of Wrestling Inc.

Personally, I've found Dan Lambert of American Top Team an entertaining part of any All Elite Wrestling show he's graced with his presence. I'm not rooting for him, obviously. He's basically taking Jim Cornette's real life criticisms of the show, which amount to an old man yelling at a cloud, and turning them into heel heat. At first, it was unclear which wrestler was going to take the bumps for him, although he took lumps his first appearance from an irate Lance Archer. His second appearance was a fakeout in that he had two UFC fighters, Andrei Arlovski and Junior dos Santos, flanking him but it was The Men of the Year, Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky, who laid in wait to ambush Archer as he predictably went to defend the honor of pro wrestling and his home company. Lambert appears to have taken on a regular role as Sky's and Page's manager, as he appeared in a pre-taped segment with the tag team flanking him.

The reason I like Lambert on the show isn't that I vibe with his material, hardly the case. If I heard those comments in a shoot setting, I would either post a ribald reaction picture in reply to the person making it on social media, or I would ignore them. These arguments are those of desperate dinosaurs whom the business has long passed by, no matter how many salient points they accidentally make in the process. It's more that I love his promo delivery, and I think he deals in the most effective kind of cheap heat. He's a guy who unequivocally inspires the audience to hate him. There are no shades of gray with him. You can't sympathize with him because he was a victim of circumstance like some heels. He's not cool in the least like others. He's detestable, from top to bottom, and he has been served up on every telecast upon which he's appeared as an out of touch loon who is going to get his ass handed to him with grave finality. I can take the jabs that I would think flimsy and tawdry if delivered by someone else with acceptance because I know he's not going to win unlike other heels on the roster.

Still, for as molten hot as Lambert has gotten audiences, the use of Cornette's cudgels, coupled with other transparently right wing jabs has turned people off. To be fair, the old canard complaints about people flipping too much or not "treating the business real enough" aren't the sticking points for most people. It's the use of terms like "snowflake" and "safe space," or the cliched baby boomer-created complaints about "millennials" that I've seen complaints about. For as much as I don't mind Lambert because he is not doing anything but serving him or the Men of the Year up to be lambasted in a big way, the sheer usage of that material is a sore spot for many, and I don't blame them.

The problem with having edgelord shit on your program is that when it's most effective, you might have the most vulnerable and marginalized people recoiling because they're legitimately triggered. Like, triggers are real, no matter how much one might want to make fun of them. The worst edgelord stuff? It comes off as weak and inauthentic, and there's wholesale rejection. Basically, there's a thin line to use that kind of material where you might get a positive consensus, and no matter how much it doesn't bother me, three shows where Lambert cuts pretty much the same promo is past that thin line. You need someone with the conviction, the passion, and the delivery of Lambert, but the half-life is an incomplete promo before someone comes and lays them out. From there, the invective has to move onto to a personal issue. You can't remain on a stream that will alienate people for hearing it, because if you have a wrestler say it enough, even if they're a heel, some members of the audience will start thinking you endorse that POV.

It's the same reason why you can't really run racist or sexist characters over the long term in a wrestling company. People with bigoted points of view tend not to be viewed as worthy of your employment, and it's in this instance where wrestling absolutely is not the same as a movie or other scripted media. Is it a double standard? Probably, but over the course of a movie or television show or play, no members of the cast will direct aspersions at the crowd. Kayfabe even now is such a weirdly natured thing where you want to keep the illusion that the wrestling company operates in reality even if the characters are, at their ideal, are playing a character. Nothing else really compares, which is why you can't have a Klansman as a prolonged character in a company. In this respect? No matter how many right-wing commentators and politicians spew this bullshit rhetoric, it's still not something you want a regular character in your company to espouse on a weekly basis, especially when you're taking up a "progressive" mantel.

In my blunt opinion, anyone who thinks AEW is a "progressive" company is a bigger mark than the kid showing up to their first wrestling show not really knowing if it's fake or not. Is it more progressive than WWE? Absolutely. "More progressive than the company whose chairman stands credibly accused of rape, obstruction of justice, and criminal negligence" is a subterranean bar to clear. You can't be content with being better than the other guys, especially when the other guys have such a checkered history regarding anyone who isn't white, male, or jacked to the fucking gills. You can't call yourself progressive and put Darby Allin in CM Punk's return match just because he swears to you he's been a good widdle boy even as more accusations surrounding him come out. You can't call yourself progressive and not cut bait with Justin Roberts, a piddling ring announcer, someone you can replace more easily than getting heartburn eating marinara sauce straight out of the pot, after it came to light he was sexting with minors. And you can't call yourself progressive when you play the edgelord card as much as AEW does.

Two of the company's most intensely pushed acts are/were Maxwell Jacob Friedman and The Acclaimed. The former is in position to headline All Out this Sunday in a match where Chris Jericho is putting up his in-ring career in AEW. The latter is currently shelved as an act, with Anthony Bowens getting singles matches on the Dark shows and Max Caster out because he pushed his edgelord shtick too hard during one of those Dark tapings, when he made light of the Duke Lacrosse case. I don't blame him too much, to be honest. If the reports are true that he's resisting sensitivity trainings, which are the slappiest slap on the wrist of a punishment I can think of, then yeah, that's on him, but he was goaded to make edgy comments with his pre-match raps by management. They paid him to do it, and the people who produced a pre-taped YouTube show didn't think to take the reference out. That's an institutional failure. MJF regularly skirts the line as well, and they push him hard for it. The only difference between the Maxes is Friedman hasn't crossed a line yet.

But what kind of message is Tony Khan sending by having all these edgelord acts already and then bringing in Lambert to fire off even more touchy rhetoric? What about Cody Rhodes and his wife Brandi? She's too busy on Twitter anymore yelling about how her company doesn't deserve to be criticized even after people tell her the areas they need to improve. I'm not saying AEW is a cesspool. They deserve credit for accommodating the neurodivergent, for signing Nyla Rose and then booking Veny as the second out-of-the-closet trans person to compete in their ring when the other company hasn't booked their first. They deserve credit for putting a title belt on a Black person, Sky, interestingly enough, within the first year of their company's existence when the other company waited nine years to do so.

But diversity is not a zero-sum game, nor is it one where you earn points to compete head-to-head. For everything good AEW has done, there are a lot of reasons you can ping them to do better. I am not going to list them all here, but for as much as Lambert has stoked the inner fan inside of me, I have to admit that maybe, he's not the kind of character AEW should be pushing right now. At least, if he's going to continue to be a character on the show, he should focus his grievances more at Archer than at the fans for being "soft." Being edgy is a dangerous game, and unless you're a skilled standup comedian walking that edge to get laughs for punching up, I'm not sure it's worth the risk, especially if you're a professional wrestling company.

Underpromising and Overdelivering

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Mon, 23 Aug 2021 14:30:00 +0000

Punk's AEW debut shows how to create satisfying wrestling
Graphics Credit: AllEliteWrestling.com

Before Friday night at 10 PM Eastern, at no point in time did All Elite Wrestling promise they were signing and delivering CM Punk. Okay, so I know that's really not the story. There was a lot of winking and nudging. Darby Allin said he wanted "The Best in the World" for the August 20th edition of Rampage. The sheer fact that they booked the United Center for their B-show instead of the Sears Center or something smaller in the area had to be BLATANT foreshadowing. If Tony Khan or the executive vice presidents didn't themselves leak word of Punk signing to the dirtsheets weeks in advance, they certainly looked the other way when people in the office did. You know they were stirring the pot even if they never at once said the names "CM Punk" or "Phil Brooks."

That being said, the fever pitch of people expecting Punk to show up at the United Center on Friday night wasn't based on an explicit promise. It was a refreshing change of pace for wrestling fans who spent the last few decades languishing in Vince McMahon's backwards policy of "tell, don't show" booking that infected the minds of wrestling fans enough to think that all of these trappings setting the stage for Punk was an elaborate work to get heat for MJF or the Young Bucks. I've been working on a hypothesis for a few months now that the in-the-gutter perception of professional wrestling is all due to McMahon's transparently capitalist, even more than any promoter that came before or after him, methodology of running the ship. Part of why that perception is deep in the mud is because he has a nasty habit of promising the world and delivering not even a grain from the Sahara.

Even as far back as Survivor Series 1990, when the then-World Wrestling Federation was at the peak of its Hulk Hogan-fueled hegemony over the territory system, McMahon couldn't help himself, counting down moments on his syndicated shows to a moment that debuted a member of the legendary Guerrero wrestling family, in this case Hector, in a full body turkey suit under the name "The Gobbledy Gooker." Granted, there's only so much intrigue you can mine out of a literal egg hatching on a big stage, and the mind of the fantasy booker wasn't nearly as sophisticated as it would be even eight years later when people started getting the Internet in their homes en masse. Additionally, McMahon was deep in the cartoon bag, straining hard to create larger than life personalities festooned in hokey personae that may or may not have been culturally or racially insensitive as well. The Gooker was the idea of Saba Simba (Tony Atlas), the Dragon (Ricky Steamboat), and the Red Rooster (Terry Taylor) taken to its graphic and lurid extreme.

That didn't stop the Guerrero's feather-laden debut from becoming a landmark moment of WrestleCrap. It probably wasn't the first time McMahon crowed about something changing the landscape and failing to deliver. It wouldn't be the last, or the worst, or the most egregious, or the one he tried to make happen the most despite rejection from his audience. In early 1996, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash decided not to renew their WWF contracts. In May of that year, they embraced Shawn Michaels and Triple H in the middle of the ring at Madison Square Garden, and then, shortly thereafter, they debuted in World Championship Wrestling as The Outsiders, the building block that would soon become the New World Order. They debuted in WCW under their real names, but McMahon owned the personae they used in the WWF as his intellectual property, Razor Ramon and Diesel. Jim Ross promised that Razor Ramon and Diesel were coming back to RAW, and when he did unveil them, they were not Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, who by that time had already not only joined with Hulk Hogan as the "third man," but also added Ted DiBiase, Sean Waltman (Syxx), a fake Sting, The Giant, Vincent/Virgil, Miss Elizabeth, and even Kyle Petty, but the late Rick Bognar as "Razor" and Glenn Jacobs as "Diesel."

The stunt left a sour taste in many people's mouths, one that would not easily be washed out until WrestleMania 13 in 1997, when Steve Austin and Bret Hart reignited the WWF's viability and arguably turned the tide on the northern company's perception, setting the stage for the Montreal Screwjob to give the company the boost it would use to outpace and ultimately defeat WCW in the Monday Night Wars. However, for whatever gains his wrestlers ever gave him, from Hogan to Hart to Michaels to Austin to The Rock to Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle and Batista and John Cena and Punk and Daniel Bryan and The Shield and Drew McIntyre and Becky Lynch, McMahon never lost sight of his ultimate strategy, and that was crow loudly about how good and cool and awesome his product was without ever regularly showing his work on it. Few examples could ever match the brazen and shameless as "Razor and Diesel." Even after 25 years, it's the garbage standard upon which all his decisions could be measured.

It's almost hilarious to think how much monetary success WWE has had over the years despite McMahon's utterly backwards philosophy on promotion. It's not just wrestling where the maxim "show, don't tell" is true. In fact, you can probably refine that down to a different slogan, "underpromise and overdeliver." However, in a business built on twists, turns, swerves, and surprises, that slogan is the only truth in an industry built on not only deception, but on feel. Wrestling isn't about following formulas when it's at its most successful and interesting. It's about probing a crowd, finding what the people in it want, and mining it in ways they didn't even know they explicitly wanted. The only truth is that you can't promise more than what you're willing and/or able to deliver. Tony Khan and AEW found that out the hard way at Revolution, when either by Khan's thrift or by an unfortunate malfunction, the pyro at the end of the exploding ring death match between Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley didn't go the way it should have gone. Whether or not it was a fault of Khan's or someone else, it was the only time AEW talked a bigger game than it delivered.

The company, arguably, has been as much a critical and commercial success as it has been because it speaks softy and carries a big stick. The PR team could paper each town with random ravings of Twitter users who will pump anything up as long as it's not WWE, but they don't. Every time something big and memorable has happened, it has happened with simply a match announcement, or off the cuff, or with nothing big foreshadowing it. Khan knows that people want to be the ones talking about how great something they watched is. They don't want to be told how great it is by someone with a lot of money and a burning need to assert their taste on more people than themselves and their yes-men.

And that's why Friday night in the United Center was so magical and yet so foreign to wrestling fans, some of whom only know a world where WWE was the only big league game in town. AEW teased something big. They played with the margins and toyed with fans' expectations. They didn't tell you Punk was going to be there, but they delivered him in one of the most emotional and supercharged moments in wrestling history, perhaps the most supercharged since Punk himself absconded with the WWE Championship ten years prior in an arena not far from where he made his return.

Just because WWE has conditioned fans to expect the worst does not mean the worst should be considered default. People have let that company poison their perception of wrestling for far too long, and they show no signs of stopping the way they do things. Even Saturday, when they faked out a bait and switch with Sasha Banks in the Smackdown Women's Championship match at SummerSlam, the grand surprise of Becky Lynch came out only to beat Bianca Belair in a matter of seconds, mirroring the grotesque erasure of Kofi Kingston's title win from WrestleMania in 2019 at SummerSlam via a Brock Lesnar-ing. Fans were more enraged that Belair, a wrestler they've organically gotten behind, was derailed while sycophants and surrogates yelled "WAIT AND SEE" at them than they were excited for perhaps the most beloved wrestler from two years ago finally returning to active competition.

The truth is that there is another way. AEW has shown that. Really, other companies have shown it as well, but none have been able to do it with the mainstream exposure that AEW has done to date. Wrestling doesn't have to beat you down on the reg and give you crumbs every fifth WrestleMania and say "yeah, we put smiles on faces, jack." All anyone has to do is be coy while promising the tip of an iceberg before unveiling the view that goes as deep into the ocean as that block of ice does. It's not rocket science, and yet McMahon has been able to make untold billions defying that logic. If that doesn't tell you that capitalism doesn't reward innovation or execution, just monetary pressure, I don't know what does.

Introducing The TWB Draft: McMahon Apocalypse

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Wed, 11 Aug 2021 14:00:00 +0000

Enjoy jail, bozos
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Imagine a hypothetical scenario, one that is probably too farfetched for the current state of America, but one that I feel leads to the most fun for this exercise. The United States of America has finally decided that pro wrestling, the pristine artform we all know and love, has been poisoned too much by carny bullshit over the years. The Departments of Labor and Justice have finally cracked down on Vince McMahon’s abuses of the independent contractor label, seized his assets, and liquidated WWE. For good measure, they used a few Predator drones to level Titan Towers. WWE is no more. While McMahon, his blood family, son-in-law Paul Levesque, and associated cronies like Nick Khan and Kevin Dunn have been prosecuted and brought to justice, the penalties for other wrestling promoters and promotions were less severe. All Elite Wrestling, Ring Of Honor, Major League Wrestling, and all other promotions based in the United States are also liquidated, and wrestling has become nationalized. The people behind those promotions, like Tony Khan, Court Bauer, and even the slipshod and haphazard team running Impact Wrestling, have been spared.

In the place of the current scene, a new territory system has been put into place. These six territories have been put under the regulation of a Federal Wrestling Bureau, who will act as an inheritor to the National Wrestling Alliance, which has been euthanized for its own good. These six territories encompass large areas of the United States, and each one has been given its own night to run regular television, with Sundays set aside for supercards and pay-per-view events. These six territories are as follows:

Northeast (New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Maritimes, Quebec)
Southeast (The Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida)
Midwest (Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Ontario, Manitoba)
World Class (Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico)
Northwest (The Dakotas, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Northern Canadian Territories)
West Coast (Hawaii, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah)

In order to keep money marks from accumulating all the talent, the FWB has decided to regulate the dispersal of talent through means of a draft. All signed talent to any major or independent wrestling promotion in the United States or Canada will now be eligible to be drafted into a subject territory. Or, more accurately, their rights will initially go to the territories that draft them. The six territories will be administered by the following people:

Northeast - International Wrestling Federation, run by William Regal, drafted by Jonny Law, @geohellraiser, and Jim Taggart, Friday night on FOX
Southeast - World Ass Championship Wrestling, run by Paul Heyman, drafted by Brett R. and Nick Piccone, Saturday night on TBS (6:05 PM)
Midwest - Midwest Federation of Wrestling, run by the Insane Clown Posse, drafted by Chris G., Monday night on USA
World Class - Lone Star Wrestling, run by Booker T. Huffman, drafted by AJ Morgan, Tuesday night on MTV
Northwest - Rocky Mountain Wrestling, run by Jim Cornette, drafted by J. Merkel and Andrew Hammond, Thursday night on Bravo (I told you this is true fantasy, let me cook!)
West Coast - Pacific Championship Wrestling, run by Dario Cueto, drafted by Butch Rosser, Wednesday night on ESPN2

You are now up to speed. Welcome to a Post-McMahon wrestling landscape. Welcome to The Wrestling Blog’s Fantasy Draft, a project helmed by yours truly but whose real stars were the people who volunteered to navigate this hypothetical post-McMahon landscape. Over the next few posts, there will be results of a draft. There will be even more people involved to analyze said draft picks and tell you which promotions picked the best initial roster, although from my count, all six territories selected rosters whom I would want to watch every week. There will be a free agent period, and then once the rosters are all filled out, each promotion will flesh out their first pay-per-view cycle building to their initial supercard.

This ambitious project aims to imagine a wrestling world where creative minds and non-sociopaths lead the way for wrestling to move forward as the artform it was meant to be. The McMahon family has done damage to this noble sport of kings, but I don't believe it's irreparable. Please indulge me and my intrepid cast who did most of the work anyway in our attempt to give you a better way, a better system from the ashes of an apocalypse, a much needed one at that. I hope you enjoy this.

"Eww, Wrestling Fans Smell!" - Wrestling Fans

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 13:30:00 +0000

As always, wrestling's problems stem from this jerk
Photo Credit: WWE.com

WWE is finally venturing back on the road after spending a COVID-19 residency at the Performance Center and then various arenas rigged with fans in virtual attendance from home called the Thunderdome. They will join All Elite Wrestling, who welcomed non-plant fans back in waves until they finally went with full arenas at Double or Nothing, whether or not it was a completely great idea at the time due to their location in the most Florida-location in Florida, Duval County. AEW went back on the road last week, and the results, outside of one moron fan jumping the rails in an unsuccessful attempt at impressing Jim Cornette, showed the magic of pro wrestling with a full crowd.

Wrestling has many moving components, but even in the days of packed football stadia to watch Frank Gotch and Georg Hackenschmidt trade headlocks for an hour, crowds were and still are major cogs to any show. I can't speak to how well the Thunderdome was pulled off because I would rather bathe in car battery acid than watch WWE, but the AEW shows where there were only a few plants in the crowd to give the veneer of noise just wasn't the same. Case in point, Hangman Page only "seemed" over on Twitter, but no one really knew whether or not his heat would translate across the void. At Double or Nothing, his entrance blew the partial roof off Daily's Place. Crowds make a show.

However, not everyone is raring to go with crowds finally returning to WWE. The name has been redacted so as not to bring the take anymore attention, but I mean, it came from a fairly popular Twitter user:

I could go into the reasons why these kinds of people aren't endemic to pro wrestling uniquely. Honestly, you can find stinky and rude and obnoxious people wherever you go. The people who sat behind my family and I at a restaurant the other night as we were about to leave smelled like they had just run a marathon through a hog wallow. Driving brings out the rudest and most toxic traits in people. And if you want obnoxious, I mean, these were fans of England's national football (soccer) team in advance of their loss to Italy in the UEFA Euro Cup Final Sunday. Warning, there's some male nudity ahead:

Yh ppl have gone mad 🤢😦 pic.twitter.com/1JFVD9oCZf
— sarah (@skldnxo) July 11, 2021

Photo Credit: Elliott Franks

It doesn't matter how many other places have rude and awful-smelling people, because there'll always be a subset of wrestling fans who hate other wrestling fans. Now, I'm not saying all wrestling fans are perfectly behaved and well groomed dilettantes of high society. There are a bunch of racists in the crowds at every show, pigs yelling at women to take their tops off, slobs who have not cleaned their asses since 1983, and drunken fools who want to fistfight anyone who has a differing opinion. My point is the people who are going crazy over blaming wrestling's bad reputation on these so-called hooligans might as well be pointing at the ring ropes or the video board, because they would be just as accurate.

Whether they like it or not, self-hating wrestling fans will always be lumped in with the people they decry because people who will mock and ridicule wrestling for being redneck trash do not give a shit if you're "one of the good ones." It's a way more watered down version of playing "respectability politics" only in a far less important area than civil rights. Basically, people who look down on wrestling fans aren't going to like you if you can convince them you're not what they picture in their minds. Yes, there are people who look down on everything and anything, no matter how high-class it is. However, it feels like there's a disproportionate amount of those people who will look down at wrestling fans, and there's only one person to blame.

Vincent Kennedy McMahon.

Ever since taking over the then-World Wrestling Federation from his father, McMahon has done more to ghettoize professional wrestling than every associated promoter who came before him or who was his contemporary until Eric Bischoff took over World Championship Wrestling. Between racist gimmicks, cruel and humiliating angles meant to demean the heels and women, and babyface wrestlers who catered to the basest instincts of the biggest bullies in the world, McMahon set a tone that too many other promoters decided to imitate. So when you have promoters who, by and large, attract the most slovenly and awful among the people who like wrestling, you're going to get people in the crowds who don't shower or respect other people for who they are.

You can't get those kinds of people out of the crowd by snidely making blanket statements about a group of people to which you yourself belong and demanding that no one be let back in the building, thus depriving the artform of wrestling of a vitally important component. You get them out by not patronizing the companies who let rapists and abusers back in the building after enough time passes from their Speaking Out accusations. You do so by not patronizing the companies that insult your intelligence. Maybe you speak out on Twitter to companies telling them to enforce a hygiene policy, much in the same way this competitive Smash tournament apparently is. I say apparently because it's UberFacts, and grains of salt and whatnot.

Anyway, taking a crowd away from wrestling because you have some oblivious hatred for your kin is like banning a slapshot in hockey because it might go over the glass and into the crowd. You don't ban the slapshot. You put nets up to make sure pucks don't go into the crowd. The crowd is as vital to wrestling as any wrestler, commentator, or referee, and it is far more vital to the form it is observing than any other crowd except for improv and live performances of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. You might say "a few bad apples spoil the bunch," but that's only true if you don't do anything about the bad apples before they start releasing their ethylene gas and rotting the rest of the bushel.

I know promoters don't listen to the whims of Twitter users unless they have like a quarter-million followers or the like, but putting that idea out into the world just invites evil, especially when McMahon has almost laid the groundwork to launch a product that doesn't need fans to function lucratively for him. Think about it; WWE has negotiated rights deals that make them hella profitable before a single fan would walk through a turnstile. They already proved they could run shows in a sterile environment with faces on the screens that they themselves can curate. All he'd need is enough "influencers" to start saying fans are bad and then the biggest wrestling company in the world goes fully virtual. Then you nerds would find out how much worse off a wrestling show would be when no one's there to react live.

Where Should They Go?

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Lovelace would be a wonderful addition to STARDOM in her post-WWE career.
Photo Credit: WWE.com

Wednesday, WWE let go six wrestlers in an attempt at shaving the budget. How a multibillion dollar corporation with no fewer than three revenue sources that pay them billions of dollars before the first fan walks through the turnstile or fires up a streaming service can cut talent for budgetary reasons would be beyond me if I were born yesterday. Either Vince McMahon and his shareholders are gearing up to sell the company to a multinational media conglomerate, or he's once again showing his true colors as the greediest shitbag even among the greedy shitbags that populate the ranks of wrestling promoters both currently and throughout history.

McMahon isn't the only person in play here, as the six wrestlers he released from their contracts will more than likely continue on in this field of labor that they chose at some point between being born and stepping foot into wrestling school for the first time. The nature of being released from their contract as opposed to allowing it to expire naturally is that they are all subject to a 90-day no-compete clause. I have never agreed with that stipulation in any contract, but wrestlers are the most down-bad workforce in the world, so they'll pretty much agree to anything as long as they get a fleeting whiff of hitting the ring on a Monday or Friday night. It also doesn't matter what I believe anyway. If any of these wrestlers wanted to wrestle for any company in America that had television, they'd have to wait until September 2. All Out in Chicago is September 5, as a reference point. Go ahead and salivate.

However, for as much as All Elite Wrestling might want to sign any or all of these wrestlers, should they? I would argue they have a glut of wrestlers that they don't have television time to whom they can allocate, and they just signed Lio Rush, who is a hot young star who made a marquee debut at Double or Nothing and has a pound of flesh he needs to take from Matt Hardy and his two young boys, Private Party. Would I be happy if any of them showed up at All Out? Sure, with one major exception. I'm just saying it might not be best for them. What would be best for these wrestlers though? Well, I am going to attempt to parse that in my own purview.

Adam Scherr/Braun Strowman - Scherr has said in the past that if ever came a day that he wasn't wrestling for WWE that he would hang up the boots. I wonder if he ever thought his day leaving WWE would be at age 37 coming off a WrestleMania program against Shane McMahon and not age 50 after a long, storied career as WWE's big bad final boss. For as uneven as his WWE tenure has been, there's no denying he has presence and star power. At 37, he's not exactly a spring chicken, but at his level of training, he may not be able to transition smoothly into another major promotion. The talent is there though. The myth is that great wrestlers can carry awful wrestlers to incredible matches, but I don't buy that for one second. You have to have something. The fact that Scherr had some bangers with Roman Reigns before The Big Dog really came into his own tells me he can still have a late-blooming career elsewhere in wrestling.

Someone of his size and reputation for being, for lack of a better term, stiff might be able to thrive in a place where accidentally throwing a potato at your opponent is more easily forgiven. Brock Lesnar kicked his ass for being sloppy, but you gotta think someone like Tomohiro Ishii or even Chris Dickinson might take it as a rite of passage. Scherr totally should call up Katsuyori Shibata at the LA Dojo, humble himself, and get that last bit of training he might need to have one last Batista/Lance Archer-like run. Whether he stays stateside like fellow WWE expat Fred Rosser (fka Darren Young) or heads over to Japan to run with the big boys, I see him having the brightest future with the King of Sport.

Buddy Murphy - The chatter of him being better than Kenny Omega when he was trained as a pure imitation of Omega to work for WWE was always annoying, and it did him no favors either. Murphy was always much more than WWE's spiteful attempt to have a wrestler who'd spurned them so many times after they somehow let him get away from their developmental system, back when Deep South Wrestling was their developmental system. The point I'm trying to make here is that Murphy was given that mantel not just because he looked kinda like Omega if you squinted. The temptation to have him head to AEW is great, especially for them to run the Omega mirror match and totally throw a 40 megaton spite bomb at McMahon and WWE. However, the indies are in need of a shot in the arm after WWE vacuumed up all the talent and left them with deathmatch guys and homeless Chikara students. If there ever was to be a workrate renaissance, it would have to be sparked by a guy returning to the scene from WWE, right?

To the best of my knowledge, Murphy hadn't worked in the American indie scene before he went to WWE from Australia. That being said, you don't need a one-to-one comparison to make his eventual blazing workrate run, well, work. I imagine him becoming the co-ace of Game Changer Wrestling along with Nick Gage and reinvigorating a scene that needs workhorses to attract old and new fans to arenas. I guess the big problem would be sorting out work visas and such, but I'm sure Brett Lauderdale, in between tweeting and trying to half-ass COVID response, can get that done.

Heidi Lovelace/Ruby Riott - On one hand, this release sucks because if anyone deserved to make money as a wrestler while strutting her stuff every week, it was Heidi F'n Lovelace. On the other hand, having a wrestler of her caliber free from the sexist clutches of a WWE that didn't have any idea how to deploy her talents isn't such a bad thing. The only thing keeping me from emphatically saying she should show up at All Out and kick Britt Baker upside her head is the fact that AEW already has so many talented female wrestlers that they don't already use because Tony Khan thinks having two women's feuds on the show every week is a bit much. Heidi Lovelace isn't meant to sit in the front row as a plant and wrestle every other week on fucking YouTube. She's a star.

So it should follow that a star of her caliber should be able to show off said stardom... in STARDOM. They are down a gaijin superstar since Bea Priestley announced she was heading back to the UK, and honestly, I would make that trade a trillion times out of ten. The upgrade would be MASSIVE. Lovelace's willingness to ragdoll herself for the entertainment of crowds of all sizes and her manic energy would play well in a joshi setting, and who knows, maybe she could get in as a name freelancer so she could take a few trips over to the Choco Pro classroom to challenge Lulu Pencil in EXTREME WARFARE.

CJ Perry/Lana - They say you shouldn't really work with your husband, and generally, having spouses work at different places is good for mental health. That being said, Lana was such an integral part to the early Rusev act in WWE that I might want to see CJ Perry enhance Miro in AEW. Most of why Perry's tenure vis-a-vis Miro in WWE didn't work was because McMahon was absolutely psychotic with dealing with their personal life. All billionaires are bastards, but some are more chill with things like "personal space" than others. I feel like Khan might get that he shouldn't be putting the two in cuck angles to make things work.

Tommy End/Aleister Black - End is probably a lot of people's crown jewel and for good reason. He was perhaps the best wrestler on the mainland European continent until he signed with WWE. Of course, COVID-19, Speaking Out, and WWE's expansionist tentacles have all wrought havoc on the European scene, mainland or Great Britain (Please note for first-time readers of this blog I am not saying Speaking Out was bad). In a perfect world, he'd go back to Westside Xtreme Wrestling and lead it to a renaissance, but if he did that, he would be walking back into a WWE puppet state promotion.

For as much as Scherr needs some fine tuning in his game, End can walk right into New Japan Pro Wrestling and throw his heft around. Again, with Will Ospreay on the shelf and in his feelings, the company could use another guy they could market to Americans and Europeans, especially since End doesn't have pesky things like "accusations" following him around. The ideal landing spot for him would be a shoot-style promotion, but there aren't any of those around regularly. He can fill a void as the edgy and stiff loner that Shibata held before he got injured and robbed of his career, and when Josh Barnett comes calling, he can do Bloodsport as a treat for stateside fans.

Santana Garrett - She should go straight to hell, along with Ivelisse Velez, Amber Nova, Aaron Epic, and most especially Chasyn Rance. Get all these shitbags out of wrestling.

The Cautionary Tale of Adam Scherr

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Scherr's tale should be a warning for wrestlers and all labor.
Photo Credit: WWE.com

WWE released six people yesterday. This bloodletting of personnel associated with the company has become somewhat of a regular occurrence recently, and people have speculated that it's because Vince McMahon's new right-hand man, Nick Khan, is "trimming fat" for an upcoming sale of the company. I hate using that kind of terminology to describe people losing their jobs, especially when they work for companies that have several multibillion-dollar distribution contracts. Releases cited as "budget cuts" when the company is getting ten figures from no fewer than three deals are hollow at best, but unfortunately, this is standard operating procedure for most big capitalist ventures. When you realize that the aim of robber baron executives is self-enrichment and not providing a product for a fair price, things start to come into focus.

It's one thing for an executive to transparently show their greed for all to see. It's another for a member of the labor class to blindly go to bat for the capital class' naked greed. Adam Scherr, who up until yesterday portrayed Braun Strowman in WWE, was a good little foot soldier for his bosses until he wasn't a foot soldier anymore. A lot of people celebrated his release because of an Instagram post last year where he bashed indie wrestlers for utilizing GoFundMe to make ends meet as they lost bookings due to a global pandemic that was just beginning (and, contrary to popular belief, has not yet ended). Mind you, Scherr was financially secure during this time of lost bookings because he worked for WWE. Sure, he missed out on live date bonuses, but wrestlers the stature of Scherr or Joe Anoa'i (Roman Reigns) or Colby Lopez (Seth Rollins) have downside guarantees that ensure payment regardless of whether there's a live gate attached to their appearances. Scherr ate up the "Bootstraps Mentality" bullshit shoveled to him by his bosses and by useful right wing idiots like Mike Rowe, who preach one thing as dictated to them by their masters in capital, like Dennis Prager or the Koch Brothers (or more accurately, the remaining Koch Brother).

The misconception by people in labor class that doing free public relations for the capital class is what leads to this kind of cheerleading. The wrestling industry is the most inured with this kind of mentality even as it's clearer and clearer in the present era, where match quality feels more important than ever, that labor is more important and should have more power. People like Scherr or Shayna Baszler will go on the offensive to do propagandizing for McMahon and Khan and Kevin Dunn and Paul Levesque thinking it will reap them favor in the end. For someone like Baszler, the reward they get is being put in embarrassing storylines with cruel payoffs, ironic since she herself has been at the forefront on Twitter bashing All Elite Wrestling's comparatively minor gaffes compared to the shitshow WWE constantly as going on. There isn't enough room in any box-like structure to fit every single one of WWE's narrative mistakes, and the fact Baszler keeps getting put in moments to fill even more box-like structures isn't an ironic accident, or at least it doesn't feel like one. It's a power-play. It's a reminder that even if you suck up to McMahon, he will put you in your place.

For Scherr, the penalty was much steeper. He yelled at indie wrestlers not even calling him or his company out trying to get some charity in a time when they needed it. In return, McMahon, or Khan, or whosever decision it was to release him over any number of other highly paid wrestlers on the roster, repaid him by putting him in a similar situation, all to flex capitalist muscle. In some ways, the capital class wants to mimic La Cosa Nostra, but at least the Mafia rewards loyalty. Vince McMahon doesn't reward loyalty. He doesn't reward grabbing the brass ring. He doesn't reward anything except being able to put money in his pocket.

The real tragic part about it, if you want to look for the tragedy, is that Scherr, according to reports, knew that his presence in the company was far more important than his bosses adjudged it to be, During his most recent negotiations, he was able to get himself a base salary of $1 million. Some speculate that salary was the reason they decided to cut him, even though he had been a huge part of their narrative as recently as WrestleMania, where he got the special "try and make the boss' son look good" match, a position held by guys like Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, AJ Styles, and The Undertaker in recent history. To wit, Scherr earned that money with the amount of work he put in in high profile situations. Wrestlers will always stand up for themselves in sporadic instances, but it will never, ever click with them that they not only can have the best all the time, but they can collectively bully promoters as part of a union. But unionization and "the bootstraps mentality" are incompatible, because the former requires collective action, and the latter feeds into the cult of the ubermensch. Part of McMahon's ghettoization of wrestling is getting rid of things like stables and kayfabe camaraderie between babyfaces, and that certainly filters through out of character, even if I don't believe things would be that much better on the labor front if McMahon were somehow never able to be successful in this business.

While I appear to paint a sympathetic picture of Scherr, I won't begrudge anyone for indulging in this bit of karmic retribution, especially indie wrestlers who felt the pile-on from his numerous Twitter followers. If the raving antics of Jim Cornette have taught anyone anything, it's that wrestling fans on this site don't even need to be asked to pile on someone. That being said, people get caught up in Henchman Syndrome a lot, where they will pile on lower level people and act like them getting their just desserts is justice while putting absolutely no pressure on the real evil. It's name comes from comics or other revenge stories where a protagonist will indiscriminately kill or maim the low-level grunts of the main villain and save their existential baggage about killing people for the big bad guy. I'm not saying he didn't say something incredibly stupid last year or doesn't have faulty, inaccurate ideology, but he's a symptom, not a pathogen.

If you take anything from his tale, it should be caution. Capital is not your friend, and management will almost always take capital's side over yours. The only solidarity you can find is with fellow workers. Wrestlers do not get this, and so McMahon can continue to do what he does to his roster at his own whims. You may not be a wrestler, but you probably are in the workforce. You can learn the right lessons from this situation and apply them in your everyday life. It's a fight out there, and unlike wrestling, it's all a shoot.

On Big Spots, Consent, and Safety Policing The Indies

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Tue, 01 Jun 2021 13:00:00 +0000

MV Young, above, putting Harlow O'Hara through a table off the apron was cool as hell, nerds
Photo Credit: MV Young/@THEOnlyMVYoung

One of the most ill-advised wrestling spots ever took place June 28, 1998. During a Hell in the Cell match at King of the Ring, Undertaker threw Mick Foley from the top of the cell to the floor. It is one of the most memorable spots in wrestling history, but it could have been one of the most damaging had Foley not landed on the designated fall-breaking apparatus, in this case the announce table. I am not aware of any discourse around this spot today, but I imagine if social media were around at the time, there might have been uproar around it. I'm sure there was in AOL chatrooms and on message boards, where WWF vs. WCW partisanship made the WWE vs. The World chatter today look like gentle ribbing. However, for as "unsafe" as it might have seemed then, it was a perfectly viable and acceptable spot. Half of it has to do with the planning, which regrettably and infuriatingly was not there when Vince McMahon did everything but physically shove Owen Hart to his death in another controversial and entirely objective ill-advised, unsafe stunt a year later. The other half is that Foley himself came up with the idea and eagerly took the plunge to help put himself and his opponent over huge.

Granted, Foley's soundness of mind could come under question, as he also consented to allowing The Rock crack him in the head with a steel chair multiple times while he had his hands cuffed behind his back. No one ever said wrestlers were a smart breed, but I still cannot stress enough that the most dangerous thing a wrestler does on a regular basis is allow themselves to be slammed, back-first, onto the canvas multiple times a night anywhere between 100 and 300 times a year, depending upon what level they're wrestling. A stupid person can still consent or refuse said consent. Foley consented. He did what he did with full cooperation.

Harlow O'Hara also took this powerbomb with full cooperation and consent:

HOLY SHIT!! pic.twitter.com/ktKqJg7ZJR
— Mac McMuffins #BDM (Mittens) (@NYINDYCMPUNKKID) May 29, 2021

MV Young powerbombed her off the apron onto that rig of boards and chair at the Battle Club Pro show Saturday afternoon. The first person to react to it was some dipshit who writes for Barstool, the wire-mesh drain cover of the Internet, who blasted them for doing a "dangerous" spot in front of 30 people. A lot of other self-ordained members of the Safety Patrol jumped on, including wrestler-turned-Q-Anon buffoon Austin Aries using a burner account came out to blast this spot as if it was the most patently unsafe thing they've ever seen. Forget the fact that Young and O'Hara both have come out to defend it. O'Hara even exposed the business to show how she was okay, which is ludicrous that she'd have to come to those lengths to defend a spot that was 100 percent safer than a WWE producer ordering someone to do a dive with Mike Mizanin catching them. Do you think wrestlers after years of seeing Miz try to catch opponents with the same effort of Orange Cassidy sticking his hands in his pockets want to do a tope con hilo or tope suicida in a match against him? That consent is manufactured straight from the top down through McMahon's producers, because if it wasn't, Miz matches wouldn't have had people diving into him sometime after he got the call-up from ECW.

I don't know how many times I need to write that "wrestling is inherently not a safe business," but the same idiots that willingly give money to Vince Russo or Jim Cornette so they can be told there is a "safe" way to wrestle will never shut up as long as they participate in the corniest and most boring version of findom possible. The most important thing is that the wrestlers themselves must be allowed to consent to the spots they take until the point where they start taking risks so extreme that maybe they aren't in sound enough mind to make that consent. Was the Young/O'Hara powerbomb spot stupid? I would say it's no more stupid than taking five German suplexes a match from Kurt Angle his highest. Again, O'Hara explained it, and the execution saw her land exactly where she needed to land.

If you're that concerned over safety in wrestling, then what you want is regulation, but the dirty little secret is that the people at the top are the ones resisting that regulation. So if you think indie wrestlers doing cool-looking spots is a problem, you have McMahon and to a lesser extent Dixie Carter, Eric Bischoff, Paul Heyman, and Tony Khan to thank for that. Oddly enough, I've found in my experience that the lower levels of wrestling, the independent circuit and such in America at least, that the best regulation is self-regulation. Wrestlers do not want to end up dying in the ring, so with a few exceptions, they try to take care of each other as best as possible. Again, this maxim isn't necessarily able to be proven in any way but anecdotally, but I circle back to how few real, lasting incidents happen in deathmatch wrestling compared to how awful its reputation is. It's always "almost," where the real incidents have happened in mainstream promotions in the big wrestling culture countries.

In short, I am not entirely sure how this discourse does anything but serve to denigrate wrestling that doesn't happen under Titan Sports' banner. All Elite Wrestling suffers from this badgering from down bad WWE fans who don't enjoy what they consume for 10 hours or so a week, so they have to lash out at other promotions doing cool stuff whose fans are thriving mostly. AEW can survive it easily because they have a cable deal, a billionaire owner, and a network that loves what they're doing to the point of throwing television time at them. Indie promotions, however, don't have any of those luxuries. Vince McMahon's narrative that "wrestling existed in smoky backrooms" before he took over is a gigantic lie, but enough people believe it that indie wrestling is already behind an eight-ball. But having useful idiots like the shitbag from Barstool or Cornette heavily police anything that isn't WWE does more to hurt the perception of wrestling on the whole than any shitty thing McMahon does, and that depresses me more than anything else in this industry outside of the number of abusers, rapists, and fringe extreme right-wing operatives who are continued to be accepted within its confines.

It shouldn't matter if O'Hara and Young do cool shit in front of "30 people" like that's some kind of slam. If wrestling is art like some people claim (like I used to claim), then they aren't doing cool shit like that for anyone but themselves. If it isn't art, then one might think doing that awesome spot would get 30 people talking about it and then maybe attracting 30 more people to Battle Club Pro. If what you want is boring asshole shit in wrestling, then by all means keep yelling about these spots when all you are is a spectator, or in better, more pointed and accurate parlance to the industry, a mark. Then you're doing McMahon's work for free and allowing him to steal those spots from the indies, do them in grossly sanitized ways with wrestlers who don't have to worry about self-regulation, and choke the industry from the top. Then, when all the cool indies have been choked out of existence, and the only ones left are what he's bought, you'll have nothing left to neg, and McMahon will have nothing left to steal. But wrestling is already the most capitalist of capitalist ventures anyway. That's always been the endgame. If it wasn't, WCW would still be around.

The Best Wrestling Show Since WrestleMania XXX: A Double Or Nothing 2021 Conceptual Review

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Mon, 31 May 2021 13:45:00 +0000

Graphics Credit via AllEliteWrestling.com

On paper, All Elite Wrestling's Double Or Nothing 2021, the third event named as such and the second consecutive one held at Daily's Place in Jacksonville, FL, was every bit a loaded show as the best wrestling events of the last decade have been. The funny thing about that, at least in America, is that the best cards on paper rarely have translated to results. I blame WWE for conditioning people never believe the hype either way. Their best shows, outside of the sublime run between Tables, Ladders, and Chairs 2012 and WrestleMania XXX, were always unexpected, and the hyped shows more often than not faltered.

All Elite Wrestling, however, is not WWE. I mentioned WrestleMania XXX, and that, for me at least, was the high water mark in mainstream American wrestling for the last 15 years, and one of the top shows overall, American, mainstream, or otherwise in that timeframe. Double or Nothing this year has now entered as a contender to that title. I will break down why.

Hangman Page vs. Brian Cage - The platonic ideal of a wrestling match is, as noted linguist Big E Langston says, big sweaty men slapping meat. Cage and Page both had some questions coming into the match. Cage hadn't put together a complete match in years, and Page has had people questioning whether he's falling victim to the same indulgent vices his Elite friends have with matches going too long. Neither of those things were a question here, as both dudes threw bombs like the titans they were and got the crowd primed for the main show (I wasn't able to catch Riho vs. Serena Deeb on the Buy-In, sadly). There's absolutely no question that the time away from crowds has not hurt Page either. For a first impression and a show opener, this match delivered.

The Young Bucks vs. Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston - Pro Wrestling Guerrilla is famous for putting on epic tag matches that people tend to say need editing but cannot find what parts to edit from the match. While I've found them trying to maintain that same energy for singles matches and not working, the tag matches never feel like they go too long, just long enough. What does that have to do with AEW? Well, the Bucks were the ones who put that PWG tag division on their backs for most of the Tens, and this match against Kingston and Moxley felt the most like the best PWG epic tags. It took me back to a classic DDT4 tournament, and with the personal stakes, it hearkened back to perhaps my favorite two-on-two tag team match ever, The Young Bucks vs. The Kings of Sexual Intercourse, Kevin Steen and Akira Tozawa. I thought the cavalcade of run-ins at the midpoint of the match dampened the pace, but Kingston and Mox were both warriors here. The match only furthered to solidify the Bucks as what they need to be in order to establish both themselves and the tag division they hold so precious.

I've seen criticisms of the Bucks and Kenny Omega as being Executive Vice President god-bookers, but honestly, they have always needed to position themselves strongly in America, where they're not as established as they were in Japan. Omega's downfall will come sooner than the Bucks', but the Jackson Bros. putting over whatever team beats them for their Tag Titles will be made a lot more than either Proud and Powerful or Private Party were when they put them over in the early days of Dynamite. Hell, perhaps Santana and Ortiz are the princes who were promised and will get their decisive win over the Bucks down the line. It's only the smart play after what happened in the main event.

The Casino Battle Royale - First thing's first, I love how every pay-per-view so far has had some variant of this match to get dudes paydays and to shake things up a bit. This version of the battle royale had its warts, but it was structurally laid out well and it had some tasty bits within the actual action, starting with Max Caster's rap to open the match. Granted, his rhymes on Dustin Rhodes weren't as cutting as one might come to expect, but the fact that he had to stop in place to think of something and then came up with something that bad was almost endearing even if not on purpose. Christian Cage's gimmick being "outwork everyone" and disappearing for a large swath of time was also a bit disconnecting unless it's leading to a heel turn in the future. But the good bits were excellent, especially the finishing sequence of the match starting Cage okey-doking Matt Hardy into being eliminated. Jungle Boy and Cage had such a furious down-the-stretch run that was accentuated almost entirely by Jungle Boy's insane athleticism. In fact, I'd argue Luke Perry's baby boy stole the entire match for himself, starting with his shot-from-a-cannon elimination of Pentagon, Jr. earlier on. I've been saying how nice it would be to hear "Tarzan Boy" twice during a single show, and it happening with this particular match was even sweeter. I don't have any delusions that he'll knock Omega off, but I feel like the match itself is going to become one of those Dynamite instant classics.

Cody Rhodes vs. Anthony Ogogo - No show is perfect.

Miro vs. Lance Archer - The genre of "Big sweaty men slapping meat" isn't as narrow as one might think it, but again, you can thank WWE for that misconception given how many years they tried selling the public on hoss fights being unathletic, stiff, and slow. Cage/Page earlier was more of a modern workrate classic, but Miro/Archer here fit a different mold while remaining in the same spirit of big sweaty men slapping meat. There was a classic feel to the match without ever seeming like it would resort to some bullshit Superstars match featuring Ted Arcidi (when he wasn't wrestling Bret Hart). There was snug purpose with each blow, Archer barreling out of the tunnel like a madman with manic energy, and Miro letting psychosis glaze over his eyes as he did things like suplex Archer into the crowd or toss a bag containing a snake halfway back into the tunnel.

Dr. Britt Baker, DMD vs. Hikaru Shida - For as much as these two women are entwined with each other, they've never had the best chemistry. Even the match that started this meteoric rise for the Good Doctor felt disjointed until Baker got busted all the way open hard-style. The beginning of the match felt disjointed, but few people really give a shit about beginnings if the stretch runs deliver. It's really a testament to how comfortable Baker has gotten in her role, especially in the ring, both technically and coordinating with Rebel to do tasty cheating bits. Baker winning relatively cleanly, far enough removed from the hijinks that come with a craven heel doing cowardly things to take the easy route, says a lot about the cult of personality that has formed around her, and she has earned every bit of artistic freedom that she seems to have in front of her. AEW may have a burgeoning star in front of them. Now, if only they would open the women's division up to allow Baker and the other burgeoning star they have, Jade Cargill, operate in parallel without colliding...

Sting and Darby Allin vs. Scorpio Sky and Ethan Page - I had the least expectations for this match, but when that is the case, exponential surpassing of those expectations tends to happen. You knew what you were getting with Allin, who delivers whenever he's in the ring. Whether or not you feel anything when he does what he does is besides the point anymore, sadly. If Tony Khan can't be bothered to get rid of Justin Roberts, what makes you think he'll get rid of someone who ostensibly makes him money? It sucks bad, but it's industry standard at this point. I hate wrestling sometimes.

But then you see things like Sting moving around like he's 20 years younger again, and things don't look that bad. I won't say he transported back to his famous time limit draw with Ric Flair at the first Clash of the Champions, but he wasn't the brittle guy people were led to believe he was when WWE wouldn't clear him after Seth Rollins broke his dang back with a buckle bomb. Taking the ramp suplex and then bouncing right back with a stage dive was the kind of shit you expect to see in movies, but wrestling at its best apes movies. Sting continues to surprise me, and as someone who totally did not grow up in a house that respected him, I appreciate the nostalgia even if it's not playing to my direct sense of nostalgia if it makes sense. Also, Page launching Allin into the third row from the ring tickled every funny bone in my body. I want more Steroid Julian, and I want him every week if he's going to do deranged feats of strength like that.

Kenny Omega vs. PAC vs. Orange Cassidy - When they made it a point to announce that there were no disqualifications or countouts before the match, I started to get a little fuzzy in the brain thinking that this was just another thing they gently swiped from WWE that I'm not sure I ever liked. After two full years of operation, that expectation was a "me" mistake, given how AEW rarely if ever does the kind of narrative things WWE does. They embraced the fuckery and fully explored the studio space, and the match really came off for the better because of it. It started out slow, but I think every three-man match that has happened since ECW closed doors suffers from a far weirder feeling-out process than a one-on-one match or a match where only two people are in the ring at the same time.

But the crux of a good wrestling match in 2021 doesn't necessarily have to be a well-structured, smartly laid-out, psychology-laden match like it did in 1986. Those kinds of matches still exist, even in AEW, even on this show. Even though it had MOVEZ and big flourishes, the Tag Team Championship match was every bit the modern Rock n Roll Express vs. Midnight Express match that old school storytelling freaks love to tout, just gussied up. I don't really know if you can promote a three-way match without the expectation that it's just going to fall on the wrestlers themselves doing as much crazy bullshit as they can in situations where it can only work with two or more people trying to make it pop. But that's where you get stuff like Cassidy throwing Orange Punches like they were Halloween candy or PAC dropping a Black Arrow on two dudes engaged in a submission hold. Omega throwing belt shots around en masse because he is the belt collector was a nice character touch as well. They finished hot.

Additionally, the way they have things set up is that Omega has a lot to do over the summer while AEW heats up Hangman Page for what I expect to be his All Out date with destiny. Omega can do singles matches with both Cassidy and PAC. He can face down the newly reminted Bullet Club Hunter Frankie Kazarian. And of course, he has that date with destiny against Jungle Boy. Dynamite is going to thrive with title defenses, and who knows, maybe the Kazarian title match can happen on the first episode of Rampage. Speaking of which...

Mark Henry Introduced As Newest Member of AEW Broadcast Team/Coaching Staff - Personally, I'm glad to see Henry out of the WWE fold. Even though he did get a few shots to run with the ball as a wrestler, those runs, as legendary as they were, felt paltry compared to the times WWE put him in cruel storylines that may have been racist or fatphobic. I just hope Tony Khan isn't a COWARD and paid whatever money it took to Three-Six Mafia or even Vince McMahon himself to get "Some Body's Gonna Get It" as Henry's entrance music.

Stadium Stampede II - I unfortunately didn't see last year's first Stadium Stampede, so I have no real frame of comparison. I couldn't tell you how much the production changed, but I thought it was overall a successful way to end the best PPV in company history, even if I disagreed with some of the production choices and with the idea of the Inner Circle rappelling in from the scoreboard. I fully understand I may be overly squeamish here, but I just have memories of bad rigging dooming Owen Hart to a negligent and unnecessary death. My guess is Khan wouldn't have done it if he couldn't have gotten professional rigging. I'm an old fucker of a wrestling fan, so I have long memory.

The real singular thing that felt a little bit off to me for this match was that there wasn't much action where they were all fighting together. I felt that branching off made it feel less like a match and more like a season finale episode of an action show, which isn't in and of itself a terrible thing, but it can cause some brain fog for people who have their brains wired to watch wrestling a certain way like I do.

Regardless, the action itself was quirky, violent, striking, and most importantly emotionally effective. You had meat and potatoes action at the base, but then all the fun japes and insane twists just kept piling up and gave the match a delightfully absurd feel, which I think is a must for any cinematic match. Like, if you wanted it to feel "real," there was no reason not to have it confined to the ring. Blood and Guts was the "realistic" match anyway. This one had to have a cardboard cutout of Shad Khan, a cameo from Urban Meyer, Konnan DJing in a club where FTR and Proud and Powerful had a drink before kicking each others asses, Cash Wheeler chucking bottles at Ortiz like they were shoes being thrown at an unwelcome rodent in the house, Chris Jericho breaking out the most business-casual stapler spot ever, and Wardlow trying to stab Jake Hager with literal icicles.

Past the absurdity and the japes held a lot of great meaning, a hot and impactful finish, and options to have one last showdown, even if just between the leaders, in the future. There were callbacks, both to the first Stadium Stampede with Sammy Guevara getting to run someone down with a golf cart instead of being on the business end of one, and from Blood and Guts with MJF threatening to toss Jericho from height again. And the fact that Guevara got to be the one with the spotlight on him to finish the match was a brilliant touch, both to add more to his legend and to make it so that Jericho didn't finish the job on MJF and left the door open for a rubber match down the line. Overall, it was the perfect capstone to a near perfect event.

Overall - I felt myself cursing out Jim Ross more than usual during this show (seriously, his commentary alone during the Women's Championship Match alone should have gotten him skewered, but he's been a sexist fuck for so long no one cares anymore), and there were some questionable choices even in the good matches. That being said, even with Cody Rhodes going America all over everyone's asses, there was an undeniable feeling that Double or Nothing this year was an all-time show with a runtime that felt inordinately shorter than the near-four hours it clocked in at. The mark of a great show is that you never seem to look at your watch or phone for time during it, and when the show ends, you're in awe of how much time has passed. It's not controversial to say that Double or Nothing 2021 was AEW's best show ever, or at least best pay-per-view (there have been a few insanely stellar episodes of Dynamite), but I don't think it should be controversial to say it was the best thing put on a pay-per-view basis since... well, WrestleMania XXX. I would go out of my way to watch this again, so you should definitely catch a replay if you can.

On Wrestlers and Their Politics

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Fri, 28 May 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Cena misspoke, and in the process, he showed what most wrestlers are made of
Photo Credit: WWE.com

John Cena will be in the next installment of The Fast and the Furious, the ninth one, to be exact. Well, it's technically the tenth movie, but Hobbs and Shaw, a movie starring fellow former wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson with a cameo appearance from current wrestler Roman Reigns, was a spin-off (mainly because Johnson and franchise anchor Vin Diesel allegedly cannot get along at all), but I don't want to be too pedantic. Anyway, he got in trouble with the Chinese government when, in promoting the movie in Taiwan by referring to that island as her own country. The Western capitalist world (and Sporcle, apparently) recognizes Taiwan as a country, but China does not. In fact, China considers Taiwan as a rogue province, and the leaders get really antsy at best when someone goes against their claim. This isn't endemic to the mean ol' scary Communist nation, because Turkey will get mad if you recognize the Armenian genocide, and the United States will get pretty pissy if you bring up that she was one of the last nations in the world to outlaw slavery. Governments across the board tend to get really mad if you tell people within them that they're wrong.

Anyway, Cena, when learning he ran afoul of the Chinese government, issued an apology in Mandarin, a language he learned when he was at the crux of WWE's expansion effort into the country.

Per popular request, here's Mr. John Cena's apology video with English subtitles. I kept all the incoherence in the video, as well as the curious absence of what he's actually apologizing for pic.twitter.com/WmJlRcyOID
— Tony Lin 林東尼 (@tony_zy) May 25, 2021

This move certainly appeased the Chinese government, but it caused an uproar with a certain crowd back home. Generally, American politicians have been frothing at the mouth to start some shit with China, from garden variety trade wars to both Donald Trump AND Joe Biden entertaining the idea that COVID-19 was either a deliberate or accidental deployment of biological warfare. The Republican party loves slamming anyone who has an opinion left of what Joe Manchin averages as an agent of the Chinese Communist Party, but Democrats love taking their potshots. Anyway, the apology was almost as unpopular with one group of people as the original statement was with a whole other. My favorite criticism, though, is when people accuse Cena of having no principles. It shows a tacit misunderstanding of the role of a wrestler as public figure, and the reason why someone like Sami Zayn espousing hardcore leftist ideologies is so rare is not because wrestling companies generally have gag orders (they might, but I don't think they'd be nominally effective), but it's because most wrestlers reside in a throbbing mass somewhere right of center with more of them further to the right than they are to the left. Most wrestlers are also not stupid in terms of knowing where their bread is buttered, so even some dingbat like Drake Wuertz, who somehow lasted an entire year as an out racist Q-Anon operative before WWE fired him is still rarer than a two-time Trump voter who keeps their mouth shut because they know leftists and "snowflakes" buy their merch too.

The only principles that most wrestlers have are how to make money. In this regard, Cena is perhaps the one who shows the world what a wrestler is made of, more than Hulk Hogan, whose career flopped, more than Johnson, who developed his own apolitical public language that keeps focus on his brand, more than Dave Bautista, who is more actor than wrestler it seems. People can debate the merits of a wrestling personality all they want in these bubbles where fans populate, but the outside world sees this and maybe it clicks for them the first time that wrestling is just full of descendants of carnies who just want the next dollar and not to burn their territories. It's one thing for a non-wrestling fan to bristle the first time someone like Cena nakedly shows them how whorish wrestlers can be. When someone who's been in the business, around the business, exposed to the business reacts with surprise or disgust, it's naïve at best, maybe overly idealistic.

Sure, you want your pro wrestling figures to take stands for good as wrestling grows more, becomes more lucrative, and gets more avenues for widespread distribution. The monkey's paw tradeoff here is that if you want more wrestlers to take stands, they will show you who they are. Zayn, Batista, Kevin Nash, Mick Foley - all of these guys are unicorns in an industry full mostly of soft conservatives who will chase tax cuts and "free market solutions" like they were horses and those items were carrots dangled out in front. Some of them tell you their affiliations through the industry. As it turns out, "WE the People" Jack Swagger is Jake Hager in real life. Cody Rhodes' horrendous "American Dream" promo on Anthony Ogogo said more about Rhodes thinks is babyface material than most of the things he talks about as an inclusive Executive Vice President. Most people stay quiet or let their transgressions go on a more personal level, like when people such as MJF or Chelsea Green post fan art without crediting the artist first.

But if every wrestler who wasn't already out as a lefty or some whacked out Q freak like Wuertz or John Zandig or some Reddit libertarian like TJP came out and said they were registered Republican and were, at best, "Never Trump" people who still somehow believed in things like "compassionate conservatism?" Would it change your mind on being a wrestling fan? If it did, I could not blame anyone, but the naïveté involved thinking that any industry had a majority of people aligned with your value system would have to be staggering. It's not just wrestling where these kinds of people congregate; it just happens to be the industry that is most amenable to accept that kind of person.

This line of thinking should not dissuade anyone from speaking out, or Speaking Out to be more germane to the topic, because you shouldn't accept terrible people doing terrible things. It should also be noted that not every creep, abuser, or rapist in wrestling is some basement-dwelling Q freak. David Starr was perhaps the most vocal leftist in wrestling, and everyone saw what happened with him. There are dangerous predators and virulent ideologies at play, and then there are just dudes who picked the wrong party and kinda don't say much about it. As much as the ideal political system anywhere would have people like Bernie Sanders on the right wing instead of the left, there's still a lot of inertia to overcome to get there, a lot of hearts and minds to win over. Meanwhile, the idea that every form of entertainment or hobby must be ideologically pure will only lead to a miserable life with absolutely no way to dull the pain of existence. It's in this regard that the viewer has to turn the sensitivity dial to see how much they're willing to forgive. Obviously, "forgiving nothing" is horrible and leads to an enjoyment of absolutely zero wrestling, and "forgive everything" just allows these shitheads to get away with everything without at least feeling aggrieved enough to yell about being "cancelled."

Perhaps the best example of calibration comes with two timely wrestlers, both of whom are dead, and both of whom have had issues while they were alive. People's views on New Jack were colored differently by how much rope they gave him for losing his temper in the ring, but one place where he felt legitimately in the wrong was with respect to his daughter, Washington Heights. Transphobia is a virulent character quality to have, but there's a difference between keeping it to yourself and lashing out at those closer to you, which is bad but something contained, and spreading that hate to everyone within earshot and further. I'm not saying this aspect of New Jack's life is good or should be papered over. If that's a non-starter with you, I understand.

That being said, there's a difference between someone like New Jack and someone like the Ultimate Warrior, who spent most of his life after wrestling speaking homophobia on college campuses, running bigoted websites, dedicating his life so that everyone marginalized felt bayonets at their throats. There's being a bigot and keeping that radius close to your vest and then proselytizing that bigotry so that your goal was to make sure the largest swaths of vulnerable people possible suffered. It's why more people felt like they could celebrate someone like New Jack, or Road Warrior Animal (whose crime was being a sexist meathead) and not someone like Warrior.

Most wrestlers may not publicly reach levels of even New Jack. Most of them are going to be like Cena, saying what they need to say in order not to fumble the bag. I don't think it should be surprising when they say whatever they need to say to keep their revenue streams open, and I don't think most of them, even those who are right-leaning, are worth the agony of writhing over. If you spill your vitriol over everyone, you won't have anything left for when it's really needed anyway. Trust me; as long as wrestling exists under capitalism (and maybe even after capitalism is extinct, which I seem to think will not happen in my lifetime), there will be a litany of people worth going after. Puppets caught in the middle of petty nationalistic jerk-off contests probably aren't worth it.

To Whom Does Chikara Belong Now?

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Wed, 26 May 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Nineteen years ago yesterday, Tom Carter and Mike Spillane ran their first show out of their newly-formed wrestling school. They chose the name "Chikara," which is a Japanese word that translates as "power." For 18 years, the company was a deeply-rooted part of the Philadelphia wrestling scene, and one that had live reach to locales like Chicago, North Carolina, and England. All of that went down the toilet when the extent of abuses perpetrated within the company was exposed during Speaking Out. Not only were individual wrestlers named, most graphically and specifically Kobald, but Spillane himself, who competed under the name Mike Quackenbush and carried on the company and school after Carter, also called Reckless Youth, left later on in 2002, was implicated in turning a blind eye to abuses by wrestlers and trainers to perpetrating mental abuse and short-shrifting on payments. The groundswell of, well, speaking out caused Spillane to close the promotion and for students and longer-tenured wrestlers, all the way up to Hallowicked, who had been there since day one, quit the company and resigned their posts as trainers at the Wrestle Factory.

The last time Chikara presented any new content was on June 20, when they aired the last installment of pre-taped Action Arcade Wrestling on IWTV. Four days later, the promotion had shut down after the allegations became too heavy. That did not stop Spillane from almost immediately going on the offensive to rehabilitate his image. He started posting rambling, self-absorbed videos where he did everything but apologize for the sloppy shop he was running. When the Philadelphia Inquirer came calling to him for an interview about how things went down, he compared the people making accusations about his company to a "mob lighting [his] house on fire. He basically has gone onto discrediting the accusers, one of which came out and said that Kobald raped and abused her, in an attempt to pave the way for a comeback that thankfully has not happened yet.

It's hard to say that the actions of one person tainted nearly two decades of pro wrestling memories and experiences for fans and the wrestlers who were fortunate enough not to feel the pinch of either Spillane or any of the deviants in the company, mainly because even if the buck did stop at Spillane, there were plenty of other people who contributed to a miserable atmosphere. Aside from Spillane, Ophidian, a long-time wrestler with the company and trainer at the school at the time of Speaking Out, was accused of impropriety. Yolanda, the popular gear-and-merch designer/maker, levied accusations against Ophidian's longtime tag partner Amasis. That doesn't even begin to cover the number of wrestlers who were booted from the company after their misbehavior reached critical mass, i.e., Spillane could no longer ignore it, like with Thomas Sharp/Blaster McMassive and Rory Gulak.

Still, there were a lot of things about Chikara that were, at the time, fun experiences where people made long-lasting friendships and had their itch for pro wrestling gratification scratched to perfection. Yes, the guy at the top turned to be evil, but Vince McMahon is categorically worse in deed and ego. Does that make the moments at WWE shows etched in memories of fans invalid? Absolutely not. The only difference between McMahon and Spillane is that the former has enough money to smooth any problem over, and there are far more vocal fans of WWE who are willing to forgive him as long as he satisfies them than there are for Chikara. The thing about fostering an environment where "everyone was welcome" with a veneer of tolerance, respect, and inclusivity is that even if you yourself are full of shit like Spillane was and still is, the people who flock to your promotion, whether it be as fans or workers, buy into it. When you hurt those people, they will not easily let you forget it. When the margins are much slimmer than what they are at the big companies in Stamford and Jacksonville, shit like this sticks more easily.

And so you have a legion of fans, not numerous like what would and will again pack arenas for live telecasts on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights, but still statistically significant, who are orphans. For wrestlers and other personnel like Bryce Remsburg, Eddie Kingston, Kimber Lee, and Tony Deppen, further high-profile employment was in the cards, but the younger trainees with less cache were stuck with a bill they didn't deserve. They went from underpaid and exploited but part of a collective that at least could have increased their exposure to a wider world to unpaid and without any greater collective with a strong name brand. Some of them have learned to tread water enough to keep going, but the whole house of cards coming down left an entire community in shambles. Some of who were adversely affected deserve it, no doubt. I'm not sure a majority of those who were rudely awakened had it coming though.

Chikara as a brand name belongs to Mike Spillane, but I'm not sure the memories are his to tarnish though. It can be tough to get over those callouses, and if one cannot, it cannot be held against them. People in 2021 still cannot watch Chris Benoit matches for the same reason, but not everyone has trouble separating art from artist, or in this case, because wrestling is not art, wrestling content from person behind the wrestler. What I am saying is you should not let Spillane ruin the memories for you if you don't want them to be ruined. Chikara was more than wrestling anyway. There were friendships forged in the crowd there. It was an experience that was a huge part of people's lives, and in this era, where life itself does a good enough job of depressing the fuck out of people, happy memories should not be so easily turned from joyous to miserable.

Do not take this message as a tacit endorsement of Spillane's comeback. That's because Chikara does not belong to him, even if he owns all the copyrights and other legal bullshit. He can try to weasel his way back in the scene without earning it. He can try to run shows under the Chikara name without taking back comparing rightful consequences he suffered to vandals, but it won't change that the time spent at the ECW Arena or Logan Square Arena or the Wrestle Factory aren't dependent on his bullshit providence. The times you spent watching matches you couldn't find anywhere else, chatting up Remsburg between matches, having wrestlers on your podcast, or eating post-show meals with friends you made at these shows are yours. Take them if you want. Nothing a scumbag with capital, however much or little, can do will take them from you.

Dynamite Is Moving: The Turner-AEW Shakeup and What It Means

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Thu, 20 May 2021 13:00:00 +0000

News broke yesterday that All Elite Wrestling and Turner Networks would be shaking things up. Firstly, Dynamite, the promotion's flagship show, will be moving from TNT to TBS starting in January of 2022. While this seems like a demotion at first, it should be noted that TBS was called "The Mothership" for a reason (or, if you remember it in Dusty Rhodes' voice, "Da Muddaship."). TBS is in roughly one million more homes than TNT. Second, a third hour of mainline cable programming, Rampage, was announced for TNT, although it is also moving to TBS in 2022 apparently. Right now, the first Rampage is set to air on August 13, a Friday, at 10 PM. Thirdly, AEW programming will remain on TNT in the form of four annual specials, which sounds like to me Cody Rhodes will have his own Clash of the Champions to play with, obviously with a different name given who owns the original trademarks. Finally, according to Dave Meltzer, there will be a "significant" increase in rights fees paid to AEW, although that number is not public at present time.

There seems to be a lot to unpack here, but the truth of the matter is that this is a net positive for AEW and especially the company's fans. From the beginning, AEW's secondary programming was always confined to YouTube, which is a fine platform for many potential viewers, but the ad money isn't especially great for wrestling especially. Maybe I am speaking out of turn because I'm an old fogey who doesn't see the appeal of small-screen wrestling to be consumed whenever after it drops opposed to a rigid broadcast at a fixed time, but I feel like having more time on cable is better overall. The timeslot doesn't seem great, but the fact that Turner wants more broadcasting for their networks does. The fact that they want more is good, and the fact that they want to reboot Clash of the Champions, albeit with a different name, is even better news for fans who will get pay-per-view quality shows for the price of their cable or streaming bill.

The way AEW's roster is expanding means that more time on television is a good thing provided AEW doesn't make the same mistakes WWE does in hyperfocusing attention on a small selection of wrestlers whom they want to matter at the expense of a larger roster that is floundering. I think AEW does an admirable enough job keeping their guys fresh and relevant with the stable system, but having more opportunities for wrestlers to actually wrestle or cut promos for matches in which they will be wrestling can only strengthen the roster and the connections that those individuals have with audiences, especially now that AEW is heading back on the road in front of live crowds again.

Ultimately, this next step is AEW transforming from upstart to real live competitor to WWE's market hegemony. Financially, AEW has a long way to go before reaching WWE's market presence, especially in the form of several billion-dollar distribution contracts. However, one cannot deny the nascent popularity of the promotion compared to a WWE that has been stagnating for five years or so. Now is the chance to grow, and Turner sees that with the opportunities presented in front of them. If anyone proclaims this news to be bad, they're trying to sell Patreon subs for their own depressing hatefests wherein they complain that wrestling isn't what it used to be.

No, Don't Ban Deathmatch Wrestling

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Wed, 19 May 2021 13:00:00 +0000

One dumb stunt should not condemn all of deathmatch wrestling

There are two statements that are both true and that I think people would be best served to remember when talking about deathmatch wrestling:

Deathmatch wrestling is not for everyone.
Deathmatch wrestling is no less safe than any other kind of wrestling.

The worst damage the people who misunderstand the first statement do is maybe post a video on Twitter without an appropriate content warning for gore. Is watching someone get staked on the crown of their head with a bunch of wooden skewers gross for the uninitiated? Yes. Is it really hurting anyone long-term? My guess is no, but I also am not privy to what people talk about with their therapists. I also believe fullstop in content warnings and think everyone on Twitter should err on the side of caution when they think they should use one. Lesson learned.

People who misunderstand the second one tend to cause panics. Now, deathmatch wrestling in its current form has been around for 25 years, give or take a year or so. Frontier Martial Arts, the first ever deathmatch promotion, introduced the world to barbed wire, explosions, and all kinds of other goodies. No one really calls Extreme Championship Wrestling deathmatch wrestling, nor should they. They were on the bleeding edge of hardcore, yes, but the true inheritors of FMW in America were companies like Combat Zone Wrestling and IWA Mid-South, the ones who really took the ball from Atsushi Onita and ran with it to varying degrees of success. Safe to say, the ones clutching pearls have not won and they do not look like they're winning.

However, all it really takes is one dumbass to do an ill-advised spot, or for two wrestlers to engage in an otherwise safe spot that goes awry, and the ones who clutch pearls will maybe get the ear of the right shithead local assemblyperson, state senator, or national congressperson and get the ball rolling on regulation to limit or outright ban deathmatch wrestling. The latest spot of interest took place at a Pro Wrestling Trainwreck show, night one of the Southern Sickness Cup this past Friday. Eric Ryan, whom many might know from his days in the Cleveland-based Absolute Intense Wrestling territory, lit JJ Allin's crotch on fire.The fire was exacerbated after Ryan hit the engulfed area with a weed whacker, and Allin had to run out of the building in order to put it out. Allegedly, they were told not to do the stunt, promised they wouldn't, and they did it anyway.

I'm not going to defend that particular spot because the execution of it seemed reckless from the start. Ryan has been around the block several times. Allin seems to be a newcomer to the scene, but his concern on Twitter feels more concerned with the fact that videos of the spot have gone viral rather than any lasting damage to his body. Regardless, lighter fluid and uncontrolled fire feel like a bad combination at a wrestling show without a fire extinguisher immediately available to put it out. I wouldn't have done this spot even if I were a deathmatch wrestler who regularly had light tubes bashed over my head and thumbtacks jabbed into my back. The chance of the building going up in flames enough might have kept me from doing it, as if I were the kind of person who regularly had light tubes bashed over my head and thumbtacks jabbed into my back, the idea of my dick and balls being lit on fire might not have been the non-starter as it would have if me, as-situated right now, would have been posed with that stunt.

The thing is though, these wrestlers do not think about what can go wrong, because thinking about what can go wrong means you don't want the brass ring enough. I'm not saying it's a healthy mindset, but that mindset gets fostered from a place higher than their own sense of self-preservation. Even promoters at the lower levels of pro wrestling want their guys to go for it so they can get prestige among their peers and, more importantly, money from fans, be it in the form of ticket sales, post-event media sales, merchandise, or money garnered from views on streaming services like Independent Wrestling TV. Even if they don't have resources to ensure wrestler safety like WWE or All Elite Wresting do, they're going to try so much that wrestlers won't believe them when they're told something's too dangerous. Is it right? No. But there's also a lot of unraveling to do to change the mindsets across the board in all of wrestling, where views and money are paramount.

In this respect, the call to ban deathmatch wrestling because of one stupid spot that is tacitly encouraged is flimsy to say the least because deathmatch wrestling, again, is not inherently less safe than regular wrestling. If this one spot, which was dangerous and stupid, don't get me wrong, is worthy of putting the kibosh on an entire genre of wrestling, then perhaps the then-World Wrestling Federation should have been shuttered when Owen Hart plummeted to his death from an even stupider stunt that was advised against by professional riggers and then ignored by one Vince McMahon. Or perhaps WWE should have been shut down when Chris Benoit, suffering effects from countless headbutts he delivered from the top rope and unprotected chairshots he took to the head, killed himself and two other innocent people. Those two incidents were caused flagrantly by WWE's wanton disregard for wrestler safety.

If you want to make an arguments against those two assertions, congratulations, you are now in the same boat as every deathmatch wrestling fan who has to deal with this bullshit every time someone almost gets really hurt in an incident. It's always almost with deathmatches, perhaps because the competitors, who are unfairly maligned as the worst and scummiest of the business, know how dangerous their trappings can be and are careful with each other and themselves. Even with the worst incidents like with Nick Gage accidentally slicing David Arquette too deep with a lightbulb shot, it's always *almost* with deathmatches. I get the idea of needing to police near-misses to prevent worse incidents, but it would be unfair to single out deathmatches when so much death, destruction, and hurt have been purveyed in so-called "safer" wrestling.

The thing about wrestling is that it is not safe in the least. The only safe spot is a Shane McMahon punch. Everything else has the danger of injury trying to tread a delicate balance between looking real and actually being real. Strikes have to be pulled just right so as not to land flush and cause real impact, and this goes for everything from the most old-school of old-school punches from someone like Jerry Lawler to sophisticated MMA and martial arts-inspired strikes from neophyte wrestlers. Most wrestlers will tell you the worst thing you can do is take a flat-back bump, and wrestlers are taking them three, four, five, six, or more times a night, sometimes four nights a week when a company like WWE is not under COVID-19 restrictions and are able to tour. That adds up to put guys in wheelchairs before they hit 50. Coupled with the sharp neck bumps that are common not only in Japanese promotions but now in WWE and AEW, there is absolutely no way one can say that repeated neck and back trauma is in any way, shape, or form. Can you bleed out from being cut too deep? Yes, but that has happened in non-deathmatch scenarios.

Conversely, looking at the incidents that HAVE happened in non-deathmatch scenarios, the sheer amount of death that has happened in the ring, because one guy dying in the ring is too much, makes anyone saying something that doesn't involve blood and weapon-violence the pot calling the kettle black. Mitsuharu Misawa died taking a routine back suplex. Perro Aguayo, Jr. landed the wrong way from bumping on a dropkick landing on the ropes. Gary Albright died taking an Ace crusher where it's arguable that the impact from said move triggered the myocardial infarction that took his life. Furthermore, Peter Kaasa suffered a career-ending injury wrestling for EVOLVE in a ring that was unsafe to work in, something that promoter Gabe Sapolsky may or may not have known about sending him out to work inside of it. Then there are the wrestlers like Darren Drozdov who got paralyzed in the ring on freak accidents. A mere fraction of this blood and pain has visited deathmatch wrestling, but people would have you believe that one form of wrestling is more dangerous than the other, and it would be the wrong fucking answer.

I don't know how many times I have to say that you cannot paint with a broad brush in anything, let alone wrestling. One dumb stunt where the wrestler didn't even appear to get hurt, let alone anyone else in the building, does not condemn the entire genre any more than a single cracked foundation should condemn an entire city block of houses. I must repeat myself. Deathmatch wrestling is not for everyone. Deathmatch wrestling is no less safe than any other kind of wrestling. Just because you may happen to fall under the former sentence doesn't mean you have to believe the second one is a lie.

Zombies, In My Wrestling? PREPOSTEROUS.

noreply@blogger.com (TH) — Tue, 18 May 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Were the zombies a bridge too far? Who cares.
Photo Credit: WWE.com

WWE, in an attempt to make good on an advertising deal for Zack Snyder's upcoming film Army of the Dead, starring Dave Bautista, populated the lumberjacks outside of the ring in the match between Damien Priest and The Miz at WrestleMania Backlash with zombies. This apparently was a bridge to far for many wrestling fans who didn't like the fact that movie zombies invaded a wrestling set. The counterargument was quickly deployed, because what would a WWE pay-per-view without people yelling at those complaining about what happened free of charge? WWE has always had bullshit supernatural characters. Wrestling has always had bullshit supernatural characters. If you don't like the movie zombies, then you're attacking the Undertaker and Kevin Sullivan and whatever other spooky character who can summon viscous fluids and box-like structures.

In order to parse what these complaints and counterarguments mean, one needs to examine what it actually means to promote or consume wrestling. If you've read this free, unprofessional publication for more than one post, you know my thoughts on it. If not,then I will lay them bare here. Pro wrestling is not a simulacrum of a real fight, and regardless of what any crank like Jim Cornette or Vince Russo has to say, it never, ever has been. Ever since pro wrestling became pro wrestling, and I'm not sure when that was but it was somewhere between the dawn of time and right now, its sole goal has been to present fantastical fights that were always supposed to deliver on some expectation, unlike a shoot fight like a boxing match where the main events could be duds because the two combatants were trying to win and get out, not accrue style points. Whether that show has been to simulate a fight between two mortals using moves and stamina expectations that were impossible in any other shoot fight or to recreate movie fights in real life without need for CGI, wrestling has always leaned on the fantastical. Whether you like it or not, the Undertaker and the Irish whip require similar levels of disbelief suspension to believe they are possible.

So that's a defense of zombies, right? Well, no, it isn't. I'm not going to defend nor attack the actual execution of these zombies infesting a WWE ring, because I would rather be caught dead with my dick inside a meat grinder than watch WWE programming at present time. However, one doesn't need to be able to watch something happening without parsing some truths about it. The biggest truism in pro wrestling is that nothing is a truism except for execution. You know something is good when you see it and feel it. A worked shoot promo might seem like something that sucks until you see CM Punk sitting cross-legged on the floor atop the RAW ramp to say hi to Colt Cabana and name-drop the IWGP Championship. You can think no-selling has no place in wrestling until you see Jon Moxley pop up after a German suplex just to lariat Kenny Omega to the canvas before crumpling like a heap himself.

Attacking zombies in a pro wrestling ring does not mean someone hates the Undertaker, because execution is the key. I don't know how many times people need to say this before it gets through people's skulls, but wrestling is not science. It is an art even if it's not art, if that makes sense. It's something that requires more of an execution than a formula, why not everyone can do the Steve Austin character even if the Steve Austin character is the most important one in company history. In order to parse whether or not zombies are okay, you need to ask yourself if it made sense in the Miz/Priest feud which to that point was mostly based off Bad Bunny, if the action came off authentically, and if you enjoyed it. Answer "no" to any of those questions for zombies where you may have answered "yes" watching Sullivan and whatever coterie of freaks, weirdos, and supernatural characters he had around him at any time, and you are justified saying the zombies were bad or that they were a bridge too far for you as a wrestling fan or whatever.

The more tangible thing why it was probably a bad thing is how it came about. Using a match between two wrestlers who have been feuding over something other than this movie starring one of your ex-wrestlers to sell that movie is transparently capitalist, and although it's par for the course for Vince McMahon in his sleazebag, ghettoizing history, is it something that you want in your entertainment? "Oh, but movies do product placement all the time," and most people fucking think product placement is cheap and tawdry. Why should you want it in your wrestling, unless it turns out good, of course? All Elite Wrestling was guilty of it using a Jurassic Express vs. Bear Country match to tie into Godzilla vs. Kong. It was a good, fun match. Again, I can't speak to how the zombies in this match played out because I would rather huff jenkem than watch WWE. Using matches as naked product placement will be bad no matter who does it or how they do it, but it can be forgiven to a certain degree if it's good.

That's what everything boils down to. Did whatever thing WWE do scratch the itch of their audience? You cannot answer that in bulk because of the two-three million people in America who watch wrestling, you will have up to two-three million different reactions. I think people would be a lot better off if they just ignored the people who reacted in unapproved ways unless they're willing to engage them in good faith, which means not asking them "why didn't you enjoy this thing WWE, a company which rarely puts out good things, put out?" People have forgotten how to interact online in a non-competitive or transactional way, and it makes the online experience suck tailpipe.

Wrestling is what you get out of it. I couldn't for the life of me imagine an existence as a wrestling fan where I had to prove constantly why I liked something using "facts" and "logic" because I have to use those things both at work and in subjects outside of work that require those things like speaking out against bigotry or imperialism. Well, I can imagine it because I used to live it. No surprise that it was that era of arguing on message boards whether WCW or WWE was better using scientific method caused a burnout somewhere around 2002-03 where I didn't watch regularly for five years. Life is too short to wonder why someone online doesn't like something that you did.